


Intersections: The Effects of Trust

by Caedus501



Series: Intersections [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Glacially Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 19:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10703910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedus501/pseuds/Caedus501
Summary: “Wait!” She bit out sharply and tugged Cassian’s hand clutching the comlink away from his mouth.  “Wait, not yet.  We can still get further before we reveal our presence on Scarif and that will buy us more time once the diversion moves into full swing.”Cassian looked skeptical.  “If they’re already in place out there then I’m not sure how much longer they can stay hidden.  I’m sure they had to take out some troops just to set the charges."“I know, but if they can give us as much time as they’re able, I think it will help.”“Stand by, Melshi,” he said into the comlink.  “We’re going to try something.  Wait for the signal if you can, but if you see your moment to light the place up, then take it.”“Understood. Standing by.”Cassian turned to face her.  “Whatever you have in mind had better work.”***Jyn has a sudden realization that changes everything.  Cassian decides to trust the woman fighting beside him and together, backed by a small band of Rebel soldiers, they take on the Citadel Tower on Scarif.





	Intersections: The Effects of Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Alright everyone, I give you fair warning: Here There Be Dragons... of the canon divergent sort. I present to you the Scarif that might have been given the background of these characters as I have envisioned it. Thanks to everyone who has been following this series since part one. I've loved all your comments and questions, so I can't wait to see what you think of what I've done with this story. Also, credit where credit is due and all, so thanks to everyone who asked for a certain section from Jyn's point of view, cause, really, how could I say no to a request like that? But also, a big thank you to NewLeeLand who made me think about the consequences of my actions of giving Jyn and Cassian a history and how that might reverberate through the events of Rogue One.
> 
> Without further ado, happy reading!

_Intersections_

Part 4: _The Effects of Trust_

 

**0 BBY**

Jyn was trying desperately to get herself to calm down and focus.  This mission to Scarif was bold and risky and full of the type of danger she had been trying to avoid for years now.  Sure, she had snuck onto Imperial bases before, but this was different.  This time it _mattered_ beyond just her own petty existence.  Her father had given his life for this and no matter what she may have thought about him in the past, she wasn’t going to fail him now.

She was crouched next to Cassian in the cockpit of the _zeta_ -class cargo shuttle their little group had stolen from the installation on Eadu.  Their plan to infiltrate the Citadel Tower and access the data vault with a dozen men and a reprogrammed Imperial security droid was sketchy and half-formed at best, but it was all they had so Jyn was determined to make the best of it.  At the moment, however, her lack of patience was winning out over her promise to abide by the plan, such as it was.  She tried to concentrate on the clean scent of the tropical Scarif air as it wafted through the shuttle.  The warm salty smell carried with it the images of bright sandy beaches, calm turquoise waters, and lazy relaxation.  It was the exact opposite of everything she was currently seeing and feeling and Jyn hated it.

Just waiting, hidden, while an inspection team was allowed to waltz right into the shuttle rankled every instinct Jyn had.  Not looking the oncoming danger in the face where she could keep an eye on it was surprisingly difficult.  She had spent years looking out for herself and that had meant not hiding from potential threats when they were in her domain.  But, as Cassian kept reminding her, she was part of a team now and she had to let everyone else play their parts.

That didn’t mean she had to like it.

Sometimes Cassian could be just as pompous as his Joreth Sward alter ego.  Especially when he was telling her what to do.  She had figured it out, of course, back during her first meeting with Mon Mothma in the Rebellion’s control room.

For the most part, Jyn had been overwhelmed by her arrival at the Alliance headquarters and too focused on trying to locate the room’s exits and scheming her way to freedom to take in fine details about people.  There hadn’t been a lot of room for careful thinking about just who the dark haired man standing in the shadows was.  Once he stepped forward and started interrogating her, Jyn then had to contend with a barrage of questions about her past, for which she was not at all prepared.  Halfway through the uncomfortable interview, it suddenly struck Jyn that Captain Andor, even with his heavily accented Basic, was definitely someone she had met before.  While trying to figure out what the leaders of the Rebellion wanted from her, Jyn kept her eyes on Cassian and determined that despite the longer hair and the scruff, the Intelligence officer was the man she had met in the Corellian system under the name Joreth Sward.  It made sense that he would be present to coerce her into finding her father since he was the one who had been looking for her in the first place.

As soon as the observation had processed in her brain, Jyn had put it aside.  The question of who Sward or Andor really was didn’t concern her nearly as much as the fact that she was apparently being sent into a warzone to confront the man who had abandoned her years ago without any explanation at all.  The way Cassian had tried to order her around as soon as they were left to their own devices hadn’t sat well with her, so she tried to keep her distance from him as much as she was able.  It was a bit petty of her since they had worked together on Talus, to some degree, and that familiarity warranted perhaps some small modicum of trust.  Yet even after everything that had happened on Jedha and Eadu, or perhaps because of it, she still wasn’t sure if she trusted Cassian or not.

“Hey, you’re probably looking for a manifest…” Bodhi’s tentative voice came from below and wrenched Jyn out of her spiraling thoughts and back into the present.  She tightened her grip on her blaster and breathed deeply.

“That would be helpful,” came the curt reply of an Imperial officer.

“It’s just down here.”  That was the cue for Baze and a couple of the other soldiers to leap into action and take down the inspection team, preferably without using blasters.  Jyn and Cassian were counting on using the uniforms to give them free access to the Citadel.  She forced herself to stay still as the muffled sound of bodies hitting the deck reached her ears and she fervently hoped that one of the downed Imperial soldiers would be small enough for her to reasonably wear their uniform.  Jyn remembered from Talus that stormtrooper gear wouldn’t fit her, but the height requirements for every position in the Imperial military couldn’t be quite so standardized, could they?

When the clattering stopped, Jyn couldn’t take it anymore and made for the ladder to the cargo hold.  A triumphant Baze smiled at her and Bodhi looked near ready to faint as he stood among the bodies on the floor.  Jyn grinned as a wave of unexpected relief washed through her and she gave the Guardian a nod of approval.

Cassian came down the ladder far more sedately than Jyn’s hurried scramble.  “Good,” he said as he surveyed the scene.  “Let’s get their uniforms.  We won’t have long before someone gets suspicious.”

Jyn was always surprised by how difficult it was to undress a dead person.  People were heavy and their unresponsive limbs were uncooperative when trying to pull off closely tailored garments.  They struggled through anyway.  A few minutes later Jyn was pulling a black Imperial ground crew uniform on over her own clothes.  She left her padded vest on for extra bulk, but she was still swimming in dark fabric and there was nothing she could do about it.  The uniform Cassian put on, however, fit him like a glove.  The olive green wool curved around his form like it had been made for him.  The sight of it made Jyn cringe a bit.  When she watched him adjust the code cylinder in the specially designed pocket on the front of the tunic she could tell he had experience with the strange Imperial rank symbols.

“You’ve done this before,” Jyn said to Cassian in a quiet voice.  He gave her a hard glance, but remained silent.  Cassian turned away from her with a sharp movement to examine the readiness of the soldiers spread over the ship.

It was in that moment that realization hit Jyn like a wall of duracrete.

Of course Cassian had played the part of an Imperial officer before, she had even been there to see it.  Her mind supplied the name _Willix_ before she could even work to recall it.  Jyn couldn’t believe she hadn’t made the connection earlier and blamed her lack of perception on the alarming turn her life had taken in the last couple of days.  She’d barely had time to take in her surroundings, never mind trying to figure out the puzzle that was Cassian Andor.

She recalled talking with Cassian, as Sward, on Talus and how even then the color of his eyes and the shape of his frown had tugged at her memory.  Now she knew why.  More than a year ago he had been the one to coerce her into helping him abscond from Brentaal IV with classified Imperial hyperspace routes.  Moreover, he had sought out her help because he claimed to have already known her.  At the time, Jyn hadn’t understood what he meant and soon even the momentary surety that they had indeed met at some point was overshadowed by larger, more immediate concerns.

Now, though, now she didn’t have to wonder at the meeting Willix had been referring to a year ago, Jyn suddenly _knew._   She finally remembered the name she had thrown at Lieutenant Willix as part of a ploy to buy a few extra minutes for a computer protocol she had initiated to complete: Aach Penn.  It was the name given to her by a man on Toprawa, whom she now realized was Cassian, when he had hired her to forge him a set of scandocs back when she was working as a slicer by the name of Kestrel Dawn.  She distinctly remembered the lilt of his accent and the curl of his Rs and once again marveled at her lack of earlier recognition.

They were all the same person.  Aach, Willix, Sward – they were all Cassian.  Somehow in a galaxy filled with unknowable numbers of sentient beings, the universe had conspired to bring Jyn and Cassian together time after time.

“You—” She began, but didn’t know where to go from there.  This probably wasn’t the best time to broach the subject of who exactly had been whom in their pasts.  Cassian was focused on the task at hand, and Jyn knew she should be too.  Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had recognized her at all.  He must have, a spy like Cassian who was trained to notice every detail and spin entire stories out of the merest scraps of information.

Jyn looked down at the chest plate of her borrowed uniform and checked all the straps one more time as she thought about all her interactions with Cassian over the years.  Calling out to her with the name Kestrel Dawn when they were on Brentaal hadn’t been an accident.  He really _had_ recognized her, no matter what story he told after she had made a big deal of not knowing him at all.  Cassian had wanted Jyn’s help, so of course he would have said anything to appease her and get her to listen.  She thought about his expression when she had saluted Sward out the door on Talus as Liana Hallik several months after the Willix incident.  There had been a look of certainty that passed over his features as he had taken in her smirk.

Cassian definitely knew, yet he hadn’t said anything.  Why?

Jyn thought about it and decided that maybe he had said something, just not in so many words.  _Welcome home_ he’d said to her in the hangar on Yavin IV, as though Cassian had been waiting for her to find a place among the Rebellion for years.  The very place he had offered her over and over again.

She glanced at the cluster of soldiers who moved past her doing last minute weapons checks and figured there was nothing to lose at this point.  Jyn walked up to Cassian where he was quietly conferring with Lieutenant Sefla and laid a hand on his arm to get his attention.  Cassian’s gaze shifted over to her, sharp and questioning.

“It was you, all those times, it was you,” Jyn said in an incoherent rush.  Cassian just looked faintly puzzled so she clarified.  “On Toprawa, Brentaal, and Talus.  Each one was you.”

They locked eyes for one breath, then two, the moment charged with something electric, then he slowly nodded his head in agreement.  She couldn’t even begin to guess what he was thinking.  His face was perfectly blank, but his eyes were… desperate? Hopeful?  She couldn’t tell.

“How come you—”

“Not now, Jyn.”  He cut her off, his eyes suddenly focused on a point over her shoulder.  Jyn turned to see what had snagged his attention and saw Melshi give a ready signal from near the ramp.  Cassian was right, this really wasn’t the moment.  They had a job to do and if they failed because her mind was lost in memories instead of focused on the very real dangers of the present, then everything her father had sacrificed and everything Cassian had done would be in vain.

She started to move toward the loading ramp and take her position at Cassian’s side when Baze stopped her.  He clapped a hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye with just a touch of warmth in his own gaze.

“Good luck, little sister,” he intoned.

Jyn didn’t know what to say to that.  The sentiment almost seemed out of place for the taciturn assassin, but it also felt right for him, as though it was something from a past life.  A life that had turned to dust and ash with the rest of the Holy City on Jedha.

Jyn settled for giving him a tentative smile and an accepting nod, and hoped that Baze understood how grateful she was that he had volunteered his not inconsiderable skill for a mission that he would have been within his rights to walk away from back on the Rebel base.

She turned again and this time found Chirrut in front of her.  The warrior monk didn’t say anything, he merely smiled at her in a way that let Jyn know he had every confidence in her ability to pull off this mission.  It was a bit disarming, to be so warmly received by people she hardly knew.  Jyn reached for Chirrut’s forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze to let him know that she appreciated his silent belief in her skills.  She thought she wouldn’t have minded having the calm assurance of Chirrut next to her as they made their way through Imperial territory and she would miss the easy flow of trust between the two Guardians which shaped the way they did everything.  How strange to think that she felt she understood these two men, even though she had met them barely a day past, better than she understood Cassian whom she had met several times under several names over the last few years.

For now though, it would have to be enough that she had Cassian by her side for this mission.  Of all his other identities, Jyn liked this version of the man the most.  Unsurprisingly, the mantle of Captain Cassian Andor suited him best.  As himself, Cassian was not exactly relaxed, not in the sense that he ever let his guard down, but in the way his movements were more fluid and his turns of phrase less considered.  His voice and native accent matched his looks and mannerisms, even the little smiles he let slip past his lips every now and then seemed natural on him.  She realized now that he’d shown glimpses of that smile in his other identities, but only when they were alone or in a private moment.  It was almost as though his true self, Cassian Andor, had been peeking through just for her because of something she had said or done.  On the other hand, she had also seen that he had all the faults and foibles of a person who was just trying to do his best to make the galaxy into something better.  Somehow, knowing that Cassian wasn’t the perfect spy, and that he had gotten into trouble before and gotten himself out again, calmed Jyn enough that she could play her part. 

She managed to step out of the shuttle one pace behind Cassian and not bolt for cover or draw her blaster while surrounded by Imperials on all sides.  The door to the railcar that would take them to the base of the Citadel Tower had a dual locking mechanism.  Since she ranked lower than Cassian in their current costume, Jyn went to the control panel near the door to flip her switch while an officious nod from Cassian to the guard across the landing pad signaled the man to toggle his own switch.  She sent out a silent thank you to the universe that the guard hadn’t seemed to notice that even though two stormtroopers had entered the cargo shuttle with the officer and deck technician, a single Imperial security droid had emerged instead.  Jyn hoped their good fortune would hold since entering the railcar meant there was no turning back. 

While they waited for the door to hiss shut on the three of them, Jyn tried to steal a piece of Cassian’s stoic calm to wrap around herself until she could muster more of her own.  She would let his dedication to the larger cause guide her so that she didn’t stray into her default mode of mere survival.  She was part of a team and people were counting on her, just as she was relying on them.

Most importantly, Jyn decided then and there to trust Cassian.  She would trust him despite the end result of the events on Eadu, which really wasn’t his fault, and because he’d had her back in the past, even at times when there had been no reason for him to help her.  Trust was a weighty thing, and as she had told him once before, it went both ways.  She hoped that he would trust her, in turn, to do what was right by the Alliance and by her father.

Jyn was starting to feel better about the whole operation, so, naturally, Kay-Tu had to ruin everything with his usual aplomb.

“I have a bad feeling about—”

“Kay!” Cassian exclaimed in a low voice while Jyn hissed out, “Quiet!” as the doors finally closed.

So much for her calm.  It made her more grateful than ever for Cassian’s familiar presence at her side.  She hoped she got to tell him how much that meant to her when this was all over.

Jyn took slow breaths to steady her nerves and get her mind back on track while Cassian looked pensive beside her.

“We’re going to need a map,” he announced.

“Well I’m sure there’s one just lying around,” rejoined Kay-Tu.

“Maybe not in plain view,” Jyn said, “But if I can get to a computer terminal I can call one up easily.  The data core is guaranteed to run straight up the center of the tower, right?  All we need to find is which level the vault access point is on.  It shouldn’t take too long.”

Cassian was already shaking his head.  “Someone will notice you looking up a map to an installation you should already know every corner of.  And the information we need is bound to be encrypted.”

Jyn scoffed.  “Please, I can get around that.”

“It will be faster if Kay does it.  He knows what he has to do.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“There will be other KX-series droids in the Citadel for protection and security.  I will,” Kay paused as though searching for a word, “…convince one of them to share the location of the data vault access point with me.”

“Are you serious?”  Jyn looked hard at the droid for a moment then turned to Cassian who was as straight faced and composed as ever.  “Someone might notice me calling up a map, but you think no one will notice Kay-Tu’s arm hooked into the back of another droid’s head?”

“She may have a point, Cassian,” Kay-Tu said to the astonishment of everyone in the car.  The droid would never willingly admit Jyn was right about anything.  Circumstances were dire indeed.

“She might,” Cassian eventually conceded.  “But another KX droid will also know all the security protocols, patrol shifts, and any additional surprises that might be waiting for our friends outside when the alarms go off.  There isn’t time for you to find a map and all of that.  Sorry, Jyn.”

Jyn’s mouth twisted in annoyance and she shifted in her uncomfortable disguise, but she didn’t say anything.  She couldn’t let her usual pride get in the way right now, faster was better for the sake of the mission.

They debarked from the railcar into the heart of the Citadel itself which was simply bustling with activity.  The Empire didn’t waste money on aesthetic design and focused on functionality for the interior of the Outpost’s main building.  Large supporting pillars of duracrete were placed with measured precision throughout the tower.  In the center of the main floor was some kind of cooling unit that stretched from floor to ceiling and was painted a bright orange-red color.  The harsh light of illumination strips far overhead bounced off squads of polished white stormtroopers that moved in rigid formations across the gleaming black floor.  Groups of sharply dressed Imperial officers traded words as they waited near a bank of turbolifts along one wall with a few aides or technicians hovering nearby.  And sure enough, there were even a couple other KX-series security droids lumbering slowly through the ordered commotion.  Jyn was surprised to note that these droids looked stiff and mechanical compared to Kay-Tu, which was ridiculous because they were all droids, all just hunks of metal, wires, and electricity, so of course they looked mechanical.  Except Kay-Tu didn’t.  Whatever Cassian had done to reprogram Kay it had given the former Imperial droid more than just a caustic personality.  The only good thing that Jyn saw as she looked at the ceaseless activity was that everyone appeared to be going about their usual day.  There was no indication that anyone suspected a small incursion of Rebels to imminently throw the base into mayhem.

What she didn’t see as she looked about her was a place among all these highly trained people where Kay-Tu would be able to do whatever it was he needed to do.  She also had no idea how they were going to coax a droid into a dark corner to be “interrogated.”  They couldn’t exactly plant themselves somewhere and wait for one to just walk by since that would defeat Cassian’s argument about speed.

Well, if they needed a secret alcove for Kay-Tu to do his thing, then Jyn would find them one.  She squared her shoulders and turned to Cassian with a low whisper, “Come with me and play along.”

“What? Where are you going?” he whispered back.

Jyn didn’t answer.  She just marched up to the nearest security checkpoint some ten meters further into the building and tried to summon all the bored authority of an Imperial ground crew lackey.  Cassian followed just a few steps behind, but Kay-Tu stood sentry in an out of the way spot, his eyes never leaving Cassian’s back.

“Hey, can you bring up the feeds from pad nine?  The transponder code for a shuttle didn’t log correctly so I need a visual confirmation of the ship’s designation."

“That’s not my problem,” the guard told Jyn.  “Go back out there and do an actual scan.”

“It’s a waste of time when I know we have footage of that pad from every angle.  Just let me see it.”  Jyn gave Cassian a small nudge to let him know he was free to chime in at any time as the ranking officer present.

“Right, just call up the feed and take a five minute break while we sort this out.  There’s no need for things to get messy,” Cassian said helpfully.  Jyn approved of any plan that would get the guard way from the station.

“Yes, sir,” the guard grumbled as he entered a few keystrokes into the computer terminal in front of him and got up to leave.

“Ensign!” Cassian called sharply.

“The guard turned back to face Cassian,”

“Sir?”

“Not more than five minutes.  Don’t go far.”

“Yes, sir,” the ensign said with a salute and wandered off.  Jyn wasn’t sure that little exchange was necessary, but she supposed it helped sell the disguise.

Cassian turned to Jyn as soon as the ensign was out of earshot.  “Wait, are you suggesting Kay plug in here instead?”

“He can try.  There’s a terminal right here,” she said pointing.  While he signaled for Kay-Tu to join them at the checkpoint, Jyn searched through the security feeds now that she didn’t have to worry about entering a passcode to get into the system.  The first thing she did was delete the last hour of footage from pad nine where Bodhi had landed _Rogue One_ , just to be safe.  Then she went about comparing the angles of the holovid recordings to what she saw with her own two eyes of the room around her.  There had to be a blind spot somewhere, not even the Empire had perfect surveillance.

Kay-Tu’s own examination of the system wasn’t as helpful as Jyn had hoped, but it was no less than she expected.

“The information we need is here, but it is behind a multi-level encryption.  Any intrusion into the system will set off an alarm and send the entire Scarif Security Complex into lockdown,” Kay-Tu announced.

“Then why are we wasting time here instead of finding another droid who won’t be tied into the system directly?” Cassian demanded.

“Because I’ve just found you an alcove that doesn’t appear on any of the cams on this level,” Jyn announced in triumph.  “It should be across the floor just beyond that central processing unit, see it?  If we can get another security droid over there without Kay-Tu trying to tell it some utterly unconvincing lie, you can do whatever you need to without anyone noticing.”

“I resent that evaluation of my skills, Jyn Erso.”

“Shush, Kay!”  Cassian hissed with a glance around him.  “She’s right though.  Deception is not your strong suit.  Just let me do the talking, alright?”  He turned and searched the room for a plausible target.  “You two go wait in that alcove.  I’ll meet you there with another droid.  Kay, you’ll have to be fast and take it by surprise.”

“Understood.”

Jyn tracked Cassian’s movement across the floor with her eyes as she and Kay-Tu took their own path to the designated spot.  His posture was erect, his gait perfectly smooth and sure, his hands clasped at the small of his back.  She already knew he could affect a Coruscanti accent that could fool anyone.  Cassian really did look as if he belonged here, while Jyn felt like a rumpled mess who stood out in all this black, white, and gray precision.  She lost sight of him when he made a sharp turn toward a cluster of officers among whom towered another KX-series security droid that had fine detail painting in red instead of yellow.

In the alcove, Jyn waited opposite an unusually still Kay-Tu.  His glowing photoreceptors were trained back the way they had come, no doubt all his sensors were attuned to Cassian’s approach.  Jyn just focused on breathing and tried not to fidget.  Why was she spending so much of this mission just waiting for things to happen?

After a minute or two Jyn’s ears picked out the sound of Cassian’s voice, his accent full of hard edges, coming toward their hiding spot.

“I’m certain it’s nothing,” he said to someone, “Probably just a loose wire or an electrical malfunction, but I would like to be sure.”

“Yes, sir,” came a stilted reply in a version of Kay-Tu’s voice that didn’t sound quite right.

Kay-Tu seemed to straighten in response to the conversation, then in a movement so fast that Jyn couldn’t even process what he’d done, Cassian’s droid emerged from his hiding spot, did something to quickly immobilize the enemy droid, then whirled back towards her with his data spike already plunged into its head.  Jyn blinked a few times, stunned at the visceral violence of Kay-Tu assaulting his twin in the space of a breath.  She knew that as a security droid he was perfectly capable of such actions, it just never occurred to her that the stubborn, sarcastic droid would bother to use his skills in such a manner.

Cassian had taken up a watch while Jyn stared at the pair of droids.

“Is he alright?” she asked, concern lacing her voice as she watched the light of Kay-Tu’s eyes flicker while he worked.

Cassian glanced briefly over his shoulder at his companion before turning back to his lookout.  “He’s fine.  KX-droids are heavily guarded against external intrusion since they usually contain so much information vital to an installation’s security.  It’s difficult to bypass the self-destruct protocols and still extract what we need, but Kay knows what he’s doing.  The procedure just draws immense amounts of processing power, some of which is usually dedicated to keeping his regular functions running smoothly.”

Jyn nodded at the explanation, but remained uncertain about Kay-Tu’s welfare.  What if the intrusion failed and somehow the other droid managed to trigger Kay-Tu’s original programming?  She and Cassian would be dead before they knew anything had gone wrong.

A sudden harsh clang resounded in the alcove as the droid in Kay-Tu’s arms fell to the ground.  It seemed like a struggle for Kay-Tu to straighten to his full height, he staggered forward a step and used an arm to brace himself against the wall.

Both Jyn and Cassian turned to look at him.

“The optimal route to the data vault places eighty-nine stormtroopers in our path.  We will make it no more than thirty-three percent of the way before we are killed.”

Cassian looked at her with a grave expression, that she was pretty certain mirrored her own.  “I hope everyone is in position,” he said and pulled the comlink off his belt.  “Melshi, are you there?  What’s your status?”

The reply was fast and tense.  “Ready, ready.  Standing by.”

Cassian looked at her for confirmation that they were ready to officially start the shooting on Scarif.  Jyn closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting the moment settle into her bones.  Battle was something she knew, and she was ready for it.  But when she opened her eyes to return Cassian’s silent question, the look of determination on his face gave her an idea and she suddenly felt that this wasn’t the moment to show their hand.  Not yet.  Her epiphany about Cassian’s past identities gave her a wealth of new information to consider in a situation like this.  It would be a shame not to make use of all available resources.

“Wait!” She bit out sharply and tugged Cassian’s hand clutching the comlink away from his mouth.  “Wait, not yet.  We can still get further before we reveal our presence on Scarif and that will buy us more time once the diversion moves into full swing.”

Cassian looked skeptical.  “If they’re already in place out there then I’m not sure how much longer they can stay hidden.  I’m sure they had to take out some troops just to set the charges.”

“I know, but if they can give us as much time as they’re able, I think it will help.  The longer we go without blowing our cover, the farther we’ll get.”

“Stand by, Melshi,” he said into the comlink.  “We’re going to try something.  Wait for the signal if you can, but if you see your moment to light the place up, then take it.”

“Understood. Standing by.”

Cassian turned to face her.  “Whatever you have in mind had better work.”

For her part Jyn was stunned.  He had held the attack simply because she had asked, without even demanding an explanation from her.

“I haven’t even told you my idea yet.  You might not like it.”

His mouth twisted into a wry smile.  “I trust you.  What have you got?”

Jyn’s eyebrows flew into her hairline under her helmet at his statement of trust, but she tried to present her reasoning in as calm and analytical a fashion as she could manage in order to hide the fact that she felt like she had been suddenly thrown into hyperspace without a ship.

“You’re a spy, right?  You spent months aboard a Star Destroyer as Willix, at least, that was the impression I got at the time,” Jyn began.

Cassian affirmed her assumption with a nod and waited for her to continue.

“So let’s use that.  We’ll bluff our way past as many troops and security checkpoints as we can before we ask the others to draw the rest of them out of the Citadel.  I’ve seen you at work, Cassian, this is something you could do almost without thinking.”  Cassian frowned a little at her words, but he didn’t protest them outright.  She turned to face the droid and found him still stooped from his earlier efforts.  “Kay-Tu, this ‘optimal route’ to the data vault, what exactly does it entail?”

“Aside from the regular and somewhat unpredictable movement of troops throughout the complex, there are two security checkpoints that must be passed through and two different turbolifts are required to reach the access point.  One of the lifts only responds to specially cleared security personnel and officers of the rank Captain and above.”

“Alright, anything else?” she inquired.

“That isn’t enough?” Cassian growled.  “In case you didn’t notice, I’m only a lieutenant!”  He tapped the rank plaque of red and blue squares on his chest for emphasis.

“For now, but we can fix that,” Jyn said, waving aside Cassian’s concerns.  She studied the Imperial rank insignia on Cassian’s uniform then turned back to the droid.  “Kay-Tu, is it true that these little squares can be encoded with information readable by electronic devices when necessary?  And code cylinders have the word ‘code’ in them for a reason right?”

“Those are both accurate statements.”

“I don’t think I like where this is going,” Cassian said with a grimace.

“It will work.  If we can do it quietly it will take them a long time to notice.  There are too many people here for one officer’s absence to be noted immediately.”

Jyn watched Cassian take a few deep breaths with his eyes closed, as though mentally preparing himself for what they were about to do.  Honestly, did he think it was going to be easy breaking into a place like this?  No matter what their plan, simply walking in and heading straight for the vault wasn’t going to be an option.  He was used to organized, thought out operations with a certain amount of support and preparation, but Jyn was a criminal, a thief, and a slicer.  She was used to looking for the alternative route, the backdoor into the system.  She may not have had the experience Cassian had with parading around as an Imperial officer, but now that she recognized this mission on Scarif for what it was – an information heist – she was in her element.

Finally Cassian opened his eyes and there was steel lacing the warm brown irises.  “We’ll make it work.  There will be a better chance of going unnoticed if we can do what we need to do on a less trafficked level of the Tower.  Kay, what is the likelihood of finding an officer of sufficient rank between the first lift and the secure one?”

Kay-Tu tilted his head to one side as he processed the numbers based on whatever data he had gathered at this point.  “There is a seventy-seven percent chance that we will locate an officer of sufficient rank to get us past the second checkpoint once we are on the seventh level of the Tower.”

Jyn looked over at Cassian, her eyebrows raised in question.  “That sounds good enough for me.”

He hesitated.  “One last thing before we do this.  The troopers helmets have a HUD feature, which means if they scanned me and did a search I wouldn’t match any records of personnel stationed on Scarif.  The game would be up and we’re forced to fight our way past them.”

“How likely is that to happen?” Jyn asked, her brow furrowing as she considered the matter.  “I mean it’s not an automatic scan, is it?  They’d have to call up a database search, so as long as you act every centimeter the Imperial officer the way I know you can, then we should be fine.  There’s no way every person on this base knows everyone else.  Besides, you would be somewhere in Imperial records as Willix so if it came to it, we could figure out how to use that.”

“I suppose so,” he muttered.

“Cassian, we don’t have time to debate this anymore.  This will work.  Either you trust me and you own skills or you don’t.  Which is it?”  Jyn demanded.

He looked her straight in the eye at that and she glared back a challenge.

“Jyn’s plan has a fifty-one percent chance of success.  Considering the circumstances, those are good odds, I suggest taking them.  And she’s right, the clock, as they say, is ticking.”

“Alright, let’s do it,” Cassian said as he straightened his shoulders and moved to the edge of the alcove to check if the coast was clear for them to emerge, then he looked back over his shoulder at her and quirked an eyebrow, “But only because Kay’s agreed with you about something twice within an hour and that must mean something.”  Then he strode out of the alcove, moving as though he owned the place.  Jyn was a bit surprised by his moment of levity, but moved to follow him anyway. 

Kay-Tu barred her path by holding a durasteel arm in front of her.  She looked up at the droid, confused.  “GT-96-A13.  That is your number,” he announced.

“What?”

The droid gave no answer, he just hurried off to fall in behind Cassian with practiced ease and Jyn was left to play catch up in more ways than one.  Kay-Tu discreetly directed Cassian toward a security checkpoint behind which a turbolift was waiting for them.  This would be their first real obstacle.  If they could make it onto the lift, Jyn was pretty sure they could handle whatever came next.  As they approached the small bank of terminals arranged in two opposing rings to either side and just ahead of their goal, Cassian gave a firm nod to the man in a nondescript gray uniform tunic and cap sitting behind a set of control panels and proceeded to walk right past him, Kay-Tu at his side.  Jyn was just two paces behind them and tried to keep her stride even and sure, but it didn’t seem to help.

“Stop there!” the guard in gray said loudly.  “Ground crew aren’t cleared for lift access in this quadrant.”

Jyn’s initial reaction was to reach for her blaster and blow the man out of the way, but she tamped down on the impulse.  Causing a scene was the exact opposite of what they wanted to do at the moment.  With her heart in her throat, she opened her mouth to give some excuse, but Cassian beat her to it.

He made a noise that simply exuded contempt and leveled a cold stare at the guard.  She tried not to react to the way the patented frigid Imperial haughtiness looked on Cassian’s features, but it was an expression that made her want to punch him.  It was the same look all Imperials wore when they had to speak to someone they considered beneath them.  Even the guard seemed to pull back from the clear disdain radiating off Cassian.  There was clearly a reason why he had survived so long in deep cover operations among the various branches of the Imperial Service.

“This technician,” Cassian began in his brittle Coruscanti accent, “is assisting me in developing new docking and scanning procedures that will minimize the redundancy in the reports filed across three different departments and thus increase overall efficiency, as the General requested several weeks ago.  As the technician is clearly accompanying me, I assumed it would be obvious that I am granting him temporary access to the levels of this quadrant.”  The ice in his tone made the hairs on the back of Jyn’s neck stand up.  Cassian could be a little scary sometimes.  He was undeniably good at his job, but he portrayed the self-important Imperial officer a bit too well.

“Y-Yes, lieutenant!” the hapless guard stuttered out.  “I’ll just need to log his identification number in the system alongside the code I already have from you, sir.”

Both the guard and Cassian turned their gazes on her, one set of eyes nervous and darting glances at the hard eyed officer next to him, the other pair cold and oddly blank.  She had no idea what she was supposed to do.  Cassian may have been able to fake a plausible sounding number, but Jyn had no idea even how many digits a non-cadet identification number had.  Then she saw Kay-Tu shift in her periphery and suddenly remembered his unexplained ramble of numbers in the alcove, well she remembered most of it.

“G-T-9-6-A-1…” She rattled off as much of the alphanumeric identifier as she could in a voice she hoped sounded passably male.  They had taken her disguise off a man, she knew, and any record attached to “her” identification number would reflect that fact.  As she neared what she thought was the end of the number, however, she began to slow.  Jyn couldn’t recall for the life of her what the last digit was, or if there were actually two more letters or numbers and not just one.  She looked at the reprogrammed droid who seemed entirely too at home in this environment and tried to keep the panic from her eyes.  Cassian’s frighteningly cool gaze wasn’t helpful or reassuring in the slightest.

Thankfully, before it became too obvious that she had hesitated, Kay-Tu silently held up a hand from behind the guard that showed three long metallic fingers.

“…Three,” Jyn finished.  She had to quickly turn her gaze away from Kay-Tu since she could have sworn the droid was looking superior for having warned her without actually warning her about the requirements for getting past the checkpoint.  She stared at the guard instead with a challenge in her eyes, daring him to continue to question her.  Fortunately, it seemed he didn’t want to incur Cassian’s wrath any more than she wanted to continue to be held up.

“You’re ID number has been logged in the system and you are both cleared to proceed, sir.”

Cassian didn’t bother to answer the man, he merely turned on his heel and made his way to the lift where he punched the call button with a vehemence the poor piece of machinery probably didn’t deserve.  Jyn hurried to his side, afraid he would snap at her too if she moved too slowly, even if it would only be part of his character.

They waited in tense silence for the indicator light to change, not so much as looking at one another.  Finally the door to the lift slid open with a hiss and they all stepped into the narrow car.  Cassian hit the button for level seven which was where their next target was located and turned to Jyn as soon as the car was moving upward, his face still blank but no longer hostile.

“Where did you pull an ID number from?” He asked in his regular lilting accent.

Jyn’s face soured.  “You should ask your droid so that he can stop looking so smug about it,” she muttered.

“I am not being smug.  I am a droid and therefore I am incapable of showing emotion.”

Jyn snorted.  “Tell that to your face.”

“Once again, I must remind you—”

“Kay, leave it!  Thank you for helping her, you did well.”

“You said I had to.”

Cassian visibly fought for patience.  “Alright, do you have any idea where we’ll need to go to find a high enough ranked officer?”

“The information I obtained from K-4TS suggested that Admiral Gorin, General Ramda, Captain Torvaal, and several others will be concluding a meeting on level seven within the next five minutes on the south side of Delta Quadrant.”

“So we run this like we did with the droid.  Cassian, you pick your mark and lead him to where Kay and I will be waiting,” Jyn suggested.  “I’ll do the punching, you do the Imperialing.”

He raised an eyebrow in judgement at her choice of words, but Jyn couldn’t care less at the moment.  As long as the plan worked.

“Kay, you’ll have to lead us to the right room,” Cassian said.

“Naturally, I am the only one with a map in their head.”

Jyn couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the droid’s remarks and Cassian let out a half-hearted huff.   Yet she noticed some of the tension had left his shoulders at Kay-Tu’s comment, as though the dry wit provided some form of normality and comfort for him.  Jyn caught herself briefly wondering how long the reprogrammed strategic analysis droid had been paired with Cassian, but she quickly schooled her thoughts away from the topic and forced her focus back onto the mission.

The lift was slowing as they approached their destination.  Jyn did her best to take slow, even breaths as she looked at her companions – Cassian’s stoic calm and Kay-Tu’s towering form just waiting to spring into action.  _We can do this,_ she told herself, _and Melshi will blow the outer edges of the base sky-high drawing the rest of the stormtroopers away from us.  We can do this._

Jyn belatedly noticed Cassian staring back at her, his eyes asking a silent question.

“Are you with me?” Jyn asked him quietly.

A small smile curled the corners of his mouth upward.  “All the way.”

The lift doors opened.

The trapezoidal hallway in front of them was rather wide and easily accommodated the two rows of five troopers each that marched past in perfect unison.  The floors were the same gleaming black as every other centimeter of Imperial flooring the galaxy over.  Every surface she could see, including the boots of soldiers of every rank, reflected the bright light of the illumination strips mounted on the ceiling and running along the walls – they made Jyn want to squint her eyes.  Panels of switches and buttons lined an adjacent wall and were lit with their own set of flashing red and yellow lights.  Far along down a hallway directly to her left, Jyn thought she could just glimpse the azure blue of the Scarif skyline through a transparisteel window.  The main room beyond the corridor that contained the lift was large and spacious.  It was less crowded than the main ground level they had just come from, but it seemed to contain more computer terminals and machinery.  Jyn honestly couldn’t say what most of it did.

Kay-Tu stepped from the turbolift with Cassian at his heels and Jyn bringing up the rear.  She could only hope that whatever intercept course Kay-Tu was plotting, it would involve far fewer people than the numbers currently in her field of vision, or there was no way she was going to be able to discretely take out a captain or a colonel without also taking down a squad or two of troopers.  Jyn wished her remaining truncheon was more easily accessed through her disguise.

Their odd little trio garnered a few extra glances from passersby, but it wasn’t enough that Jyn was overly worried about it.  Her current uniform was definitely a novelty up here among all the white plastoid, olive drab, and gray tunics.  Finally Kay-Tu stepped into an offshoot corridor and they began to leave the numerous possible witnesses behind.  Their path wasn’t completely deserted though.  Every now and then a pair of stormtroopers would stomp through the hallway, blasters held in the regulation ready position.  The occasional officer might scurry past, eyes sliding over Jyn and her group and frowning at their presence.

“Cassian, the meeting room with our potential targets is around the corner up ahead, the second door on the left.  Jyn Erso and I will wait in the hallway right across here,” Kay-Tu said with a gesture to a dimly lit, narrow passage that appeared to be somewhat off the beaten track.

The Rebel spy gave an affirming nod, tugged the hem of his uniform into perfect smoothness, and set off around the corner alone, shoulders back and head held high.  Jyn and Kay-Tu took up their positions, forced to wait for their moment once again.  If Jyn weren’t so keyed up with nerves she’d probably be screaming in frustration right about now.  She may have a decent head for infiltration strategy, but in practice she preferred a straight fight.  There were fewer opportunities to imagine all the ways something could go wrong when you were busy dodging blows from an opponent.

The wait was interminable.  Jyn almost envied the lanky droid his inability to get nervous or properly feel anything.

Suddenly Kay-Tu straightened up.  “I can hear Cassian exiting the meeting room in conversation with Captain Torvaal.  He must have been as impatient as you are to move things along.  That is unusual.  Oh,” he said with a note of surprise, “There is a blind spot in the hallway about eight meters out from the corner.  They will reach it soon.”

Jyn jolted.  Blind spot?  “What?  Why didn’t you say anything before?” she demanded.

“I did not see it until I ran through all of K-4TS’s data archives.”

Jyn growled out something indistinct that even she couldn’t understand and pushed away from the wall.  She didn’t dare think about what she was about to do and hoped fervently that the droid was right.  She unhooked the safety catch on her holster as she walked and pulled on the blaster just enough to loosen it in its position so that it would draw more easily.  To dissuade any suspicion, Jyn kept her hand close to, but not on her blaster pistol as she rounded the corner.

Cassian spotted her, of course, one eyebrow rising at her unexpected appearance in the corridor, but his face betrayed nothing else as he listened to the Captain at his side prattle on about something or other.  Jyn tried not to make it too obvious that she was counting her steps, unwilling to carry herself beyond the hole in Imperial security she was looking to exploit.

“You there, deck officer,” the captain bit out harshly, breaking off his conversation with Cassian.  “You’re not permitted on this level!  What are you doing up here?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Jyn said, hoping she sounded appropriately contrite.  “I was charged with an urgent message for the lieutenant.”

“Well get on with it, we’re busy,” the captain said with a scowl.

“Yes, sir!”  Jyn put her hand on her blaster and gripped it tight.  “Lieutenant, I’ve been told to inform you—” She never finished the sentence.  Jyn had no plausible communiqué to relay anyway.  Instead she stepped directly in front of Torvaal, shoved her blaster into his stomach, and fired.  The fabric of his now scorched uniform muffled the sound of the shot.  She caught him as he slumped forward and Cassian held a hand over the man’s mouth to quiet the cry of alarm that rang passed his lips before the light faded from Torvaal’s eyes.

“What are you doing?  This wasn’t the plan!”  Cassian whispered to her

“This was more expedient,” Jyn said with a shrug.  “Besides, Kay-Tu approved.”

“I would hardly go so far as to say I approved,” said the droid who had not unexpectedly joined them.  “I merely provided additional data.”

“What were you planning to do with him now that he’s dead?”  Cassian demanded in a heated tone.

“What were you planning to do with him in the first place?” countered Jyn.  Admittedly she hadn’t really thought it through beyond having the opportunity to do the dirty work where the holovid recorders wouldn’t see her.  Of course, Cassian was right, and now they were left with a rather conspicuous problem right in the middle of a hallway.

Cassian let out a huff of frustration.  “Help me get him back to the place you were supposed to be.  Kay, try to walk ahead of us so that you block the surveillance cams.”

Together they half supported, half dragged the limp form of the captain back to the dim hallway.  They lowered him to the ground while Kay-Tu stood guard.  Jyn immediately started unhooking the top of Torvaal’s uniform so that she could get to the pins holding on his rank plaque.  “Give me your insignia badge and put on this one,” she said, holding out the plaque of three red squares over three blue squares backed on chrome for Cassian to trade with the less impressive one currently on his lieutenant’s tunic.  She also swiped the code cylinders from both of the little pockets on Torvaal’s front and replaced the one on his left with Cassian’s cylinder.

The harried spy seemed to be having trouble with the pin backs on his own uniform, which surprised Jyn, but she kept her commentary to herself.

“I suggest you hurry,” Kay-Tu said from his post.  “There is a large group of stormtroopers approaching.”

Cassian cursed in a language Jyn didn’t recognize and struggled on with his rank plaque.

Jyn placed a hand over his.  “Here, let me,” she said softly and deposited the stolen code cylinders in his grasp.  She managed to free Cassian of his lieutenant’s pips with just a little extra effort.  The source of his strife was an unhelpfully twisted bit of metal which Jyn figured had been damaged back on the shuttle during the “inspection.”  While Cassian put himself back together, Jyn made the dead Captain Torvaal as presentable as possible.  She assumed a lack of insignia altogether would draw suspicion far sooner than an incorrect rank plaque would.  Plus, it might confuse the Imperials just enough to buy them a little more time.  She turned back to Cassian when he had finished arranging his rank cylinders as per regulation, then looked back up at her.  Without conscious thought, Jyn reached out to smooth a wrinkle in his uniform up and over his shoulder until he once again looked like a crisp, impeccably turned-out Imperial officer.

“You ready?” she asked.  He gave her a firm nod of the head without losing her steady gaze.  “We’ll give Melshi the signal once we’re in the secure lift.” He nodded again, this time his eyes narrowed in determination, and they both rose to stand on either side of Kay.

They walked out into the main thoroughfare, Cassian in the lead, and got a good six or seven steps away from the incriminating evidence in the hallway, when a detachment of stormtroopers briskly rounded the corner behind them.  Cassian moved over to one side of the corridor to allow them to pass, but he didn’t break his stride.  Jyn and Kay-Tu followed his lead.  The soldiers trooped past them without so much as turning their heads to check on the collapsed patch of darkness that was blacker than the rest of the unused passage.

Heads-up display or not, Jyn was sincerely grateful that those stormtrooper helmets pretty much cut off any peripheral vision.

As soon as they were alone again, Cassian hissed a question back at his droid.  “Kay, the secure lift, where is it?”

“Follow me,” Kay-Tu commanded.

They trailed the droid through the winding passageways of the Imperial security complex meeting no resistance at all.  Lower ranking officers moved hastily out of the way of the authority Cassian carried stamped out in little red and blue tiles on his chest.  Whether or not they recognized him didn’t seem to matter.  There were more troopers moving around like groups of worker ants serving some purpose Jyn couldn’t see.  She wondered where they were in the count of the eighty-nine stormtroopers Kay-Tu had mentioned earlier.

When a checkpoint in front of another lift guarded by two troopers came into view, Cassian pulled both Jyn and Kay-Tu into a convenient alcove.

“I don’t think just giving them and ID number will work this time.  There is no way they would grant vault access to ground crew, not even by special permission,” he said by way of explanation.  Then he turned to look Jyn full in the face, “I’m calling it Jyn.”

He was right.  A sudden alert could provide the distraction they needed to slip Jyn past security, and possibly call away those stormtroopers by the turbolift.  She gave her assent.

Cassian pulled the comlink from his belt.  “Melshi! How are you guys doing out there?”

“Ready and waiting for the signal,” came the immediate reply.

With one last glance at Jyn he gave the order.  “Light it up.”

They waited in the alcove for an extra minute so that the effects of the attack would have a chance to trickle down through all levels.  Soon enough, Jyn heard the pulsing sound of an alarm go off throughout the Citadel Tower and the first sign of confusion crossed the checkpoint officer’s face.

“Now’s our chance.  Go!” She said to her companions and urged Cassian out of the alcove ahead of her.

“Lieutenant!  What’s going on?” Cassian barked at the man posted at the checkpoint terminal, once again slipping into his sharp edged Coruscanti accent.

“I’m not entirely certain, sir,” the officer said with some hesitation.  “Command is reporting Rebels on the perimeter of the base.”

“That’s not possible,” Cassian said sounding appropriately aghast for an Imperial captain who was completely confident in the security of his outpost.  “How would they have gotten through the planetary shield?”

“I don’t know, sir, but the garrison has been deployed and all stations have been put on alert.”

Jyn watched Cassian process this information then turn to the two stormtroopers barring the way to the lift.  “Well you heard him, report to your battle stations!”

The two troopers saluted Cassian, then hurried off at a jog.

Jyn was impressed.  With a few well-placed words and an admittedly significant diversion, they basically had free access to the data vault.  She decided that any future undercover raids she took part in would have to include Cassian since the ease with which he could inhabit any persona made it almost too easy.

“Lieutenant, I’ll need the lift.”

“Yes, sir, your code clearance has already been approved.  The lift is active, just punch in your reference code for your destination.”

“Good man.” Cassian gave her a subtle twitch of the head which Jyn took as her cue to sneak onto the lift while he reclaimed the slightly panicked officer’s attention.  “Lieutenant, just calm down and do your duty.  Is this the first action you’ve seen?”

“Yes, Captain.  Aside from the drills and training exercises at the academy.”

“Well, not to worry.  The Empire is better equipped and better trained than any Rebels that dare challenge us.  This little incursion of theirs won’t get very far, you mark my words,” Cassian said before he stepped into the lift car.

Kay-Tu had already entered the necessary code so the car started moving as soon as the door hissed shut.  Jyn stared at the Rebel spy with a deep frown on her face.  Finally he sighed and gave in.

“What?” he asked and he almost sounded tired.

“That was not the most comforting speech you’ve ever made.”

He shrugged.  “It was what he needed to hear so that he wouldn’t notice you and Kay.”

“It was at least an accurate statement if not a comforting one,” Kay-Tu added.

“Not exactly helpful, Kay-Tu,” Jyn informed the droid.

They made the rest of the short ride in silence.  By the time the car came to a halt, Jyn figured they had to be pretty near the top of the Citadel Tower, maybe only twenty or thirty meters from the uppermost platform.  Not that it mattered overmuch, only in the sense that their escape route would probably be heavily dependent on access to a turbolift.

The vault level was thankfully free of troopers or Imperials of any kind.  It appeared that the detachment of Rebel foot soldiers were making a convincing stand out in the jungle and on the beaches near the perimeter ring of landing pads.  All of the hallways on this level led inevitably to an unassuming blast door and the small room beyond.  There really wasn’t much in the way of security on the door into the vault antechamber, they opened with a mere push of a button.  Perhaps they responded to the signal coming from Cassian’s stolen rank insignia, but Jyn didn’t know for sure.  The room’s sole occupant was a low ranking officer in a black uniform who stood at the center of a circular bank of controls.  After all the security protocols they had to work around to get this far, Jyn, Cassian, and Kay-Tu practically waltzed right up to the lone guard who was the last sentry in front of what had to be the doors to the data vault access point.

“Can I help you?” the black clad officer asked with a combination of distaste and confusion.  Apparently even captains in the Imperial Army didn’t just walk in unannounced to retrieve whatever information they wanted.

“That won’t be necessary,” Kay-Tu said with finality and delivered a blow to the top of the officer’s head that was more powerful than anything Jyn could have mustered.  He went down in a boneless heap and gave no sign of getting back up again.  Kay-Tu quickly took up the man’s position behind the control console and plugged in his already extended data spike.  Jyn knew intellectually that the droid was faster and would have easier access to the system, but her slicer fingers were just itching to dig around in the Imperial archives for whatever she could find: additional secret projects like the Death Star, a hidden fleet in the Unknown Regions, a secret plot to clone a power mad emperor.  Who knew what was hidden in the Imperial data core of Scarif?

Cassian had gone immediately to the still closed blast door and pushed the button that should have opened the door.

Nothing happened.

“Kay, why won’t—“

“You need to key in a code like in the turbolift,” the droid said, cutting off his master.  “The last four digits of Captain Torvaal’s identification number will do.”

“I don’t know that!” Cassian said, his voice rising in frustration.

“Alpha-three-nine-seven.”

Cassian shook his head and muttered something in that same language that Jyn didn’t recognize, but he keyed in the suggested number.

The door whooshed open onto yet another hallway that ended in one more blast door.  The redundancy made Jyn want to scream.  She stomped through the oddly circular passage that had lights running its length horizontally and made the enclosed space seem longer to her eyes than it was in reality.  She got to the door’s control panel before Cassian, intent on finally reaching the data core and finding the Death Star plans, but she was brought up short.  This panel had no keypad or buttons, only a scanning screen and five obvious areas that read fingerprints.

It was a biometric scanner.

Jyn couldn’t slice her way into those, she had never been able to.  Faking fingerprints or an ocular scan took a whole different skillset that she just didn’t have.  She couldn’t believe this was happening.  They had come all this way just for her to be stumped by a box of wires and electricity?  There had to be a way to fool the scanner.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t send that officer running off.  Let’s hope as the guard of the vault he also has access to the core,” Cassian said from beside her.  Jyn turned to blink at him, not quite sure if she had processed his words correctly through her sudden fog of panic.  “Come help me with him,” he said with a gesture.  He then turned and strode back down the little vestibule, pausing at the doorway to glance back at her when she didn’t follow him.  “Jyn, come on!”

Jyn shook the haze from her brain as quickly as it had descended and was immensely relieved that she hadn’t said anything out loud that betrayed her momentary panic.  They _could_ beat the biometric scanner after all, Cassian hadn’t even been fazed by its existence and had immediately found a solution.  She could feel embarrassed about the situation later, she decided, _after_ they had the plans.

Once back out in the antechamber, Cassian gave his droid the directive to watch their backs and got his hands under the guard officer’s torso.  After a brief hesitation, Jyn pulled the blaster off her hip and offered it to Kay-Tu.

“You’ll need this,” she told him. “You wanted one, right?”

Jyn would swear the expression on the droid’s face was one of wonder as he accepted the weapon.

“Your behavior, Jyn Erso, is continually unexpected.”

Jyn decided to take that as a compliment and went to help Cassian.  Together they dragged the heavy, unconscious man – he was still breathing, but only just.  Jyn was willing to bet there would be significant brain damage if he ever made it to a medbay –back down to the biometric scanner.  Jyn took the hand nearest her and slapped it onto the scanning plate.

For the second time in just under five minutes there was no responding hiss of opening doors.

“Kay, this isn’t working!”  Cassian shouted down the vestibule.

“Right hand!” came the reply after a short pause.

Both Jyn and Cassian looked down to see that they had indeed used the wrong hand and quickly replaced the offending appendage with the correct one in Cassian’s grasp.  Jyn remained firm in her hatred of biometric access-denial systems.

At long last the towering stacks of the data core were visible through the newly unlocked vault door.  Jyn made her way warily to the transparisteel viewport and looked up and down the length of the stacks.  The height of it all was dizzying.  The import of what she was looking at was even more astounding.  The data storage capacity of the three towers before her was almost incomprehensibly vast.  Every single plan, schematic, accounting record, supply list, and personnel file that had ever been researched, built, or even just discussed in passing since the inception of the Empire nineteen years ago could be kept here with room to spare.  And they were supposed to find just one file among all this, no matter that it was for something as big and deadly as the Death Star.

Jyn had never fully appreciated the strict efficiency and organization of Imperial record keeping before now, it never even struck her back in her slicing days when she spent a significant portion of her time combing through whatever information she could get her hands on.  At the moment, she knew the carefully maintained archives were probably her and Cassian’s only saving grace.  Otherwise, it would take untold hours, probably more like days, to sift through all that data and that was clearly time they didn’t have.

Kay-Tu’s voice interrupted Jyn’s musings from the comlink on Cassian’s belt.  “The schematic bank is in data tower two.”

Well that narrowed it down a bit.  Sort of.  If they could figure out how the towers were labeled.

“How do I find that?” Cassian asked.  He was just as perplexed as she was.

“I can locate the file for you, but you’ll need to use the handles for extraction,” Kay-Tu informed them.

Cassian removed his black leather officer’s gloves and green cap and made a grab for the chrome handles that hovered at eye level.  “What am I supposed to do with this?” he inquired of the world in general. 

While he made an attempt to get a feel for how the extraction system worked, Jyn found the computer terminal and began trying to find the file they needed.  She had been right, there were records of everything here – hyperspace routes, fleet movements, supply vendors, Deep Core cartography, and more.  All of it was useless to her, so she kept scrolling.  On the next screen she came across a heading for “structural engineering.”  That sounded promising.  Jyn selected the folder and found a secondary heading of “Project Codenames.”  Right, of course.  The plans wouldn’t be highlighted in flashing letters that read “THESE ARE THE DEATH STAR PLANS,” instead they would be hidden beneath one last layer of obscurity.  She began to read them out loud to see if anything triggered Cassian’s awareness too.

“Project codenames:  Stellarsphere, Mark Omega, Pax Aurora, Warmantle, Cluster-Prism, Blacksaber—” she got to the next name and paused, sucking in a deep breath to steady herself.

“What is it?” Cassian asked and leaned over her to read what was on the screen.  “Stardust.  Wait, isn’t that…?” his voice trailed off and a confused little frown passed over his features as he looked at Jyn.

She nodded.  “It’s my father’s name for me.  Stardust.  This is it!”  The recollection of her father’s last words further confirmed her suspicions.  _Destroy it.  Stardust._   It had been both a request and a hint on where she would find the plans.

“Kay, we need the file for Stardust,” Cassian said into the comlink.  Jyn thought she caught just a hint of a smile in his eyes for Galen’s clever way of letting her know which plans they needed without alerting the Empire to his deceit.

Up in the data stacks, one of the file locations started blinking a vibrant green.

“That’s it!” Jyn exclaimed.

Cassian repositioned himself behind the controls and deftly maneuvered the handles until the flashing data cartridge was encircled by the extraction unit.  With a twist of his wrist a data cartridge was pulled out of its housing and sat patiently in the grip of the manipulator arm, waiting to be sent on its way.

“Now what?” asked Cassian.

Jyn examined the view on the other side of the transparisteel viewport.  There had to be somewhere to deposit the cartridges so that they could be read elsewhere, but there was nothing obvious and the extraction unit didn’t exactly come with a manual.

“Down there,” she ventured, pointing at a spot below them.  “On the side of the data tower.  Does that look like a drop point?”

“Maybe?”  He carefully slid the handles around until the data cartridge was centered in front of a tube that Jyn hoped would somehow send the cartridge out to them.

It did none of those things.  A white light on the control console near Jyn started blinking.  She looked at Cassian.  They seemed to come to a mutual, silent conclusion that they were both just making guesses at how the system functioned and hoping for the best.  She decided to punch the button directly underneath the flashing indicator.  An unseen arm extended from somewhere near the lip of the pneumatic tube and clamped around the cartridge.  Jyn watched the arm flip the cartridge over horizontally before making a 180 degree arc through the air to get sucked into the tube and out of sight.  Jyn pressed herself as close to the window as she could get so that she wouldn’t lose track of their hard won plans, but it was already out of view.

“Look!  It’s writing!” Cassian said with a gesture to a readout screen below which was a slot that looked to be the right size for a regular datacard.

“We did it,” Jyn said in astonishment.  “I can’t believe it.”

“Kay!  We have them, we have the plans!” Cassian crowed triumphantly into his comlink.

There was no response from the droid.

“Kay?”  Now there was worry in Cassian’s voice.  They both turned to gaze down the vestibule as the troubling sounds of shouts and bodies clattering to the floor reached their ears.  “What’s going on out there?” asked Cassian.

Kay-Tu still didn’t answer, then the sound of two blaster shots rang out.

Cassian didn’t hesitate, he simply ran back through the short passageway, his blaster already freed from its hiding spot.  Jyn stayed behind to grab the datacard when it finished writing.  The Death Star plans were the objective of the mission, she wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of obtaining them.

She watched Cassian nearly run headlong into his own droid when Kay-Tu stepped through the blast door and unerringly shot the control panel to lock it shut behind him.

“Kay!” Cassian exclaimed, back pedaling a bit.  “What happened?”

Kay-Tu looked down at his master.  “The Rebel Fleet has arrived.”

That caught Jyn’s attention.  “What?” she asked incredulously as she stood framed by the circular doorway of the vault.

The droid began walking toward her with Cassian not on his heels and explained further.  “There’s fighting on the beach, they’ve locked down the base.  They’ve closed the shield gate.”

“What does that mean?” Jyn asked.  She looked at Cassian, “We’re trapped?”

He just nodded, an odd emotion on his face, like the beginnings of regret.

“It means we’ll need a new plan,” Kay-Tu announced.  He pushed the control that shut the vault door, then brought his durasteel arms crashing down on the panel.  A light on the heavy circular door started blinking its alarm and additional locks spun into place, effectively cutting off their only avenue of escape.

“What was that for?” demanded Cassian.

“Our incursion into the data core was noticed.  I am ensuring maximum time for our retreat.”

“Retreat to where?” Jyn wanted to know.

“I suggest we climb the tower and transmit the plans from the dish at the top.  But it will only work if the shield is open.  Someone has to get a message through to the Alliance fleet to tell them it’s coming.”

Jyn thought about Kay-Tu’s proposed plan and spotted a small hole that they could take advantage of if the opportunity arose.  In her mind, if the shield gate had to go down to transmit, and it also had to come down for them to fly off Scarif, then down was down and she would take her chances as they came, one way or another.  She knew, of course, that whichever course of action they took, they would only get one shot.  With the base on lockdown the chances of making it out to the landing pad where _Rogue One_ and Bodhi waited were slim, especially if that was where much of the fighting was concentrated.  Transmitting the plans was probably the wise choice, Jyn realized that, but she wasn’t going to limit her options just yet.

While Jyn had been analyzing Kay-Tu’s suggestion for loopholes, Cassian had immediately pulled out his comlink and spoke into it with desperation.

“Bodhi!” A crackle of static.  “Bodhi?  Please tell me you’re out there.  Bodhi!”

“Yes, yes, I’m here!” came the quiet response, as though the pilot was trying not to attract attention.  “They’ve started fighting, the base is on lockdown.”

“I know.  The Rebel Fleet is up there.  You’re going to tell them to blow a hole in the shield gate so we can transmit the plans.”

“No, no, no, wait!  I can’t!  We’re not hooked into the comms tower – we’re not tied in!”

“It may be our only chance to get the plans out.  Find a way!” Cassian clicked off and turned to face the data towers.  “You want us to climb that?”

“Oh, this is going to be easy,” Jyn said, sarcasm dripping from her words.

“I’m glad you think so,” Kay-Tu remarked and shot out the viewport with a single bolt.

Both Jyn and Cassian danced away from the flying shards of transparisteel that ripped through the air.  A rush of cold air filled the vault room as the two spaces repressurized.  Without the window pane between her and the data tower, the jump across the seemingly endless abyss below them seemed far more daunting.  Still, Jyn had been through worse.  She could make that jump and she would will her arms not to give out on the climb.  Studying the distance between her and the almost indistinguishable top of the stack, she decided she’d have a much easier go of it without the extra heavy chest plate and the additional weight of her too-large disguise.  The time for subterfuge was over anyway.  She began stripping off the Imperial ground crew uniform and soon Cassian followed suit, removing his restricting officer’s tunic.

Jyn was the first to climb through the open viewport.  She clutched at the edge of the window casing and looked behind her to gauge the distance to the stack.  She tested her legs a few times to make certain she’d be able to muster up enough force to make the jump.  As long as she twisted her body soon enough to get her arms around in front of her to catch herself against the tower she’d be fine.  The slots of data cartridges provided plenty of hand and footholds, so she just had to jump.

With one last glance at Cassian, who nodded reassuringly from the other side of the viewport, she sprang across the gap.  Jyn crashed into the unyielding tower with more force than she had anticipated, but her fingers curled around a protrusion of metal and didn’t let go.  She got her feet situated in the crevices between cartridges and began to climb.  Keeping her gaze focused upward she barely noticed when Cassian hit the data stack below her with a dull thud.  After a few more meters of climbing she heard the metallic clang of Kay-Tu’s chassis meeting the metal of the tower.  They all struggled upward in silence through the cold air and the harsh fluorescent lights.

Jyn was maybe a generous twenty meters, but a rather more realistic fifteen meters up from her starting position when Kay-Tu broke the silence, “Can you two climb any faster?”

“We’re not all untiring droids, Kay,” Cassian said with an unusual amount of irritation.

“No, I mean because of that.”

Jyn looked down to see what the droid was referring to just in time to see a flash of red strike the tower just centimeters from her feet, and far too close to Cassian’s face for her liking.

“Jyn!” Cassian yelled in warning, then pulled his blaster out and started firing back along with Kay-Tu.  Jyn, who had given her weapon to Cassian’s droid, could only try to scramble around the data tower to get out of the line of fire.  When most of her body was hidden behind stacks of Imperial data, Jyn looked back to see who had finally caught on to their little raid

A patch of steely gray hair, carefully groomed above a stark white uniform flanked by a pair of black armored death troopers.  It was the ghost who had haunted her dreams as a child, the man in white who had taken her whole world from her on a gloomy, overcast day on Lah’mu.  Her father’s one-time friend, Orson Krennic, stood in some kind of maintenance hatch firing up at her and the only other person in the universe that she had decided to trust. 

“Jyn!  Keep climbing!” Cassian urged.  He fired again at the trio in the maintenance tunnel and one of Krennic’s elite guard went tumbling through the air with a garbled shout to come to a final end somewhere in the depths of the Imperial data archives.  Jyn didn’t want to abandon her teammates, but she saw the sense of the command.  She had the datacard with the plans on it, and the plans had to make it to the fleet no matter what. 

She kept climbing.

The shooting continued below her, but she was safe enough.  Hot particle energy melted the polymer cartridge casings just a handbreadth away from where she clutched at the stacks, but nothing managed to hit her.  She heard another helmet muffled shout then a heavy clatter and guessed the other black stormtrooper had been hit.  Still the blasterfire came at them.

This time Cassian gave a shout of pain and alarm, and his grip on the tower failed when a blaster bolt finally hit home.  He fell through space not making a sound, and Jyn looked on in horror.

“Cassian!” She shouted, unable to do anything else to help.

To her immense relief, he didn’t fall far.  Kay-Tu shot out an arm, dropping the blaster clutched in his hand, and caught Cassian around the middle.  Cassian hit the droid’s solid arm with a huff that seemed to leave him breathless, but otherwise uninjured.

“Cassian?” she shouted again, this time with a note of panic that was evident even to her ears.  There was a moment’s pause before he could answer her as Kay-Tu maneuvered him out of the line of fire.

“I’m fine! It’s just my shoulder.  Keep climbing, Jyn, we’ll be right behind you,” he reassured her.  She could tell that he was trying to keep the pain from his voice for her benefit.  She followed his directive and started moving hand over hand up the tower once more, staying out of Krennic’s sight.

The Imperial engineer seemed to quickly come to the conclusion that firing at people who were not about to break cover anytime soon was a waste of his blaster’s power pack.  Jyn watched as he leaned farther out of the hatch and gazed up at her, a mix of hatred and, oddly enough, curiosity on his face.   Then he spun around and disappeared from view, white cape billowing out behind him.  Well, that was one less problem to deal with.

Then Jyn had a sudden thought, and a whole new escape route and plan to get the Death Star schematics offworld unfolded like a map in front of her eyes.  If Krennic was on Scarif, then so was his ship and it was most likely sitting empty on the primary landing pad just outside the Citadel.  They wouldn’t make someone as highly ranked as Krennic – judging by the number of red and blue squares he wore on his uniform – enter the complex from as far out as the base’s perimeter landing pads.  The point of the mission may have been to do something bigger than herself for once, to _not_ make the selfish choice, but what if she could help the Rebellion, honor her father, _and_ survive?

“Wait!” she called down to her companions, “Kay-Tu, are there other maintenance tunnels leading out from the data core?”

“Yes, there are maintenance entrances located on every third level of the Citadel Tower.”

“That means there’s another way out,” Jyn said firmly.  “Down.  Start climbing down.”  She put action to her own words and started a descent that was far more rapid than her upward climb, and it all but forced Cassian and Kay-Tu to follow suit below her, or risk getting stepped on by a determined Jyn.

“But the plans! Jyn, we have to get them to the fleet!” Cassian said, almost frantically, but he didn’t stop his downward movement, once again showing that even when the livelihood of the Rebellion was on the line, he trusted her.

“We will.  And we need to tell Bodhi that we’re changing tactics,” she realized even as she said it.  “He needs to let the fleet know that we’ll be getting off Scarif in Krennic’s shuttle.”

“What?”

“It will be docked at the primary landing platform right outside the Citadel Tower.  He just heard you shouting at me to climb.  If we can hurry down and fight our way out then we have a chance of reaching his ship before he realizes where we’ve gone.”

“She’s right once again, Cassian.  Krennic has introduced a variable that I did not factor into my initial calculations for getting the plans away from Scarif.”

The support from Kay-Tu was both gratifying and strangely troubling all at the same time, but it seemed to carry a lot of weight for Cassian.  He got on his comlink again, still managing to descend the stacks one handed. “Bodhi!  Bodhi, can you hear me? How are you doing out there?”

“I’m here!  I’m pinned down.  I have a line out, but I can’t get back to the ship.”

“You have to!” Cassian said and he sounded strained to Jyn’s ears.  “We need the fleet.  You have to get a message out!”

“I know, they need to know that you’re transmitting the plans, but I can’t tie in!”  Bodhi sounded like he was both pleading with Cassian and desperate to be away from the fighting.

Cassian carefully moved his hand down to grip a ridge in the data tower before stepping down with one foot, and then the other.  “No, we had to change plans.  You still have to contact the fleet, they still have to get that shield down, and Bodhi, we won’t make it back to you for extraction, so tell them we’re coming out in an Imperial _Delta_ -class shuttle and we’d really appreciate it if the fleet didn’t shoot us out of the sky.  Once you get through, you round up whoever you can and get yourselves out, do you understand me?”

“Where are you getting a _Delta_ -class shuttle?”

“It doesn’t matter!  Just tell the fleet and pull out of Scarif!”  Cassian didn’t bother to wait for a reply.  He stowed his comlink and continued his downward journey only slightly faster than he had been going while talking to Bodhi.  His injured arm must have been bothering him more than he was letting on.  Jyn noted the fact, but pushed it to the back of her mind.  It would be important to remember when next they were forced to fight, but at the moment she had to keep her concentration on the here and now, otherwise she would misplace a foot or grab a loose cartridge and she would go tumbling down, the Death Star plans still tucked in one of her pockets.

“Kay-Tu, how much farther down do you think?” she called down to the droid.

Everyone listened and climbed while Kay-Tu answered.  “The main Citadel platform connects to the base on level three where the primary observation deck is located.”  
“Alright, is there a maintenance hatch we can use that’s already on level three?”  Jyn asked, trying to think about the next step in her escape plan.

“How are we even supposed to know which level we are on?” Cassian asked.  “There are no indicators from within the data stacks.”

Jyn looked around her and realized that he was right.  She honestly couldn’t have picked out floor three from level twelve at this point, the intimidating height of the data towers clearly extended deep into the crust of the planet even if the rest of the base was mostly contained on the surface.

“As usual I am the only one who has been paying attention and knows precisely where we are.”

Jyn could really do without the extra lip from the droid at the moment, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.  Especially when he was making a valid point.

“Thank you, Kay.  Can you tell us precisely how many more levels before we have to figure out how to get back into the base proper?” Cassian said impatiently.

“Of course.  For you one level, for Jyn three.  I have reached the maintenance hatch,” Kay-Tu said and promptly made a powerful leap from the data tower to the open tunnel across the depthless abyss.  Jyn tracked his easy motion and wondered if her tired arms and legs were up to such a feat, not to mention she worried about how an injured Cassian would fare.

“Kay, you may have to catch me.  My shoulder –“

He stopped talking and watched as a narrow bridge extended out from the tunnel entrance to meet the data tower with just a few inches to spare.  Jyn was somewhat stymied by the apparent ease of movement they were suddenly being offered.  She supposed Krennic’s men hadn’t used the bridge to come after them from their level because it would have left them too exposed to blasterfire from Cassian and Kay-Tu.  Or maybe they just hadn’t known about it.  The need for an extending bridge made sense though, it allowed the maintenance workers or droids to get to the stacks easily, rather than balancing on the odd bit of truss that supported the whole structure.

Cassian carefully climbed onto the bridge and made his way to his droid’s side.  A few minutes later, Jyn followed suit.  Her arms and fingers were relieved to be free of the strain of keeping her from falling off the tower.

“Kay, you lead us out, since you know the way to the landing platform,” Cassian instructed.  “Stay sharp, we’re sure to attract some unwanted attention.”

They made their way down the long silent tunnel.  Unlike the vestibule above, this access way was sparsely lit and shorter from ceiling to floor and was clearly not meant to be seen by anyone of significant rank.  Kay-Tu was forced to walk hunched in on himself which gave him the odd appearance of looking frightened.  Cassian already had his blaster out, held ready in his good arm, so Jyn unhooked her truncheon – the last from a set she had lifted from a distracted Rebel soldier back in the hangar on Yavin IV before she and Cassian had even departed for Jedha – from its place on her right thigh and gripped it tight.  As they neared what must have been the exit of the maintenance tunnel, Jyn started to make out the wail of the base alarm, shrill and pulsing, above the sounds of fighting and the rumble of explosions from outside.

They were about to step right into a warzone in the heart of Imperial held territory with only one blaster between the three of them.  Jyn had to concede that this might not have been the brightest idea she’d ever had, but she was going to do her best to get out alive anyway.

Since Cassian had their only range weapon, Jyn let him go in front of her into the main hallways of the complex.  The interior passageways were lit red now that the base was under direct attack and she could definitely hear the screech of fighters zipping through the Scarif sky around the Citadel Tower.  Stormtroopers and officers of every rank scurried through the corridors as they sought to reinforce weak points in the Imperial defense.  At first it seemed like no one would notice Jyn, Cassian, and Kay-Tu who clearly didn’t belong now that they had ditched their Imperial disguises, but even keeping to the edges of rooms and staying out of the way of large detachments of soldiers couldn’t carry them unremarked upon through the entire base.

The three of them rounded a corner right into a squad of sand colored stormtroopers with oddly shaped helmets and thick brown trousers instead of armor plates on their legs.  However they were kitted out, stormtroopers were stormtroopers and Jyn and her companions were clearly the enemy.

“What the?” One trooper said in confusion before the two at the front of the squad opened fire.  Cassian fired right back and moved to seek cover.  Kay-Tu plowed into the fray without fear and handily picked up a trooper and slammed him forcefully into a few of his comrades before the droid tossed his human battering ram into a wall.  Jyn had never stopped moving after she had come around the corner.  She just let her momentum carry her right into the nearest sand colored trooper, dodging any hot bolts of energy shot her way.  Jyn bowled over her opponent and the two of them crashed into a third person.  She brought a knee up hard into the soldier’s groin and jabbed her hand into his unprotected throat.  The trooper spasmed then made no further effort to attack Jyn, clutching at his injuries instead.  She rose to her knees and brought her truncheon around with blinding speed, cracking it against the helmet of the second trooper she had fallen against.  His head whipped to the side under the force of her blow, turning farther than any human neck usually allowed.  He crumpled to the floor, but Jyn had already rolled away to land in a crouch, her hand firmly clasped around the grip of a dropped standard issue Imperial blaster rifle.

The rest of the skirmish didn’t take long.  Each of the Rebels gave better than they got and soon they were moving on through the complex.  They couldn’t stop to admire the trail of bodies in their wake or even pause to catch their breaths.  Each moment lost to battle was one more chance for Krennic and his guard to catch up with them.  Kay-Tu led them across the base, from one end to the other, drawing ever closer to the landing platform.  Jyn and her companions fought through the chaos, avoiding blasterfire, and taking out as many of their pursuers as they could.  Heat seared through Jyn’s calf as a bolt of energy grazed her leg as she ran.  Kay-Tu had more than one smoking hole in his metal chassis, but he didn’t let it slow him down.  Cassian held his injured arm carefully, blood just starting to leak out around the cauterized flesh, but he didn’t seem to notice.  At some point Jyn’s blaster jammed and burned her palm through her half glove.  She hissed at the flare of pain, which made Cassian glance over at her briefly as they bolted down a corridor, but Jyn merely tossed the defective weapon aside and bent to retrieve a new one from a fallen trooper without even breaking her stride.

“Up there!  The platform is just through those blast doors,” Kay-Tu finally called over the high pitched whine of blasterfire.

Just then the whole building shuddered and the lights dimmed momentarily.  The Citadel Tower must have been hit from the outside.  Jyn fervently hoped the Alliance fighters didn’t destroy the complex with her still in it.  Death by friendly fire when they were so close to escaping with the plans would be one of the worst scenarios she could imagine.

“Kay, get that door open!  We’ll cover you!” Cassian ordered.

The droid jogged up to the control panel and inserted his data spike into the terminal port.  Jyn crouched by his legs and shot at anything that moved.  Cassian took up position across from Kay-Tu, his body shielded by a small alcove created by the door.  Jyn didn’t think she’d ever felt as tense in her entire life as she did right then waiting for Kay-Tu to break through the door’s security.  The prospect of escape and redemption were so close, waiting for her in the shape of an Imperial shuttle on the other side of the blast door.

“Kay, hurry up with that door!” urged Cassian.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Kay-Tu told them in an infuriatingly calm voice.  “The lockdown protocols make security much harder to get through.”

Jyn gritted her teeth against a stab of pain that erupted across her more exposed right arm in response to a hit from a red lance of energy.  She glanced at the wound and saw it wasn’t deep, more of a flesh wound really, and kept firing.

“I’ve got it!” Kay-Tu suddenly exclaimed and indeed the doors slid open revealing the outdoor landing pad and a _Delta-_ class Imperial shuttle sitting primly upon it, just as she had suspected.

The three of them turned tail and sprinted for the ship, firing back behind them to keep the pursuing troops at bay.  Fortunately the boarding ramp was down and the ship open and waiting for them to run aboard.  They met no resistance in the passenger bay and Cassian barked out a quick order.  “We’ll secure the ship, Jyn keep those troopers away from us until we’re in the air.  I hope Bodhi got that message through,” he added as an afterthought already heading for the cockpit with Kay-Tu at his side.

Jyn tucked herself behind the hull of the ship and laid down a steady stream of suppressing fire while Kay-Tu and Cassian dealt with whatever onboard security measures the ship had.  She knew it wouldn’t take them long, but she was tired and jumpy all at the same time and just wanted to be airborn with the shields up.  In her exhausted state it took Jyn a beat too long to notice that her blaster had stopped firing, the power pack spent.  It didn’t seem to matter, however, as the troopers also seemed to have stopped shooting at her.  She poked her head out into the open hatchway to check what was going on and immediately felt her blood run cold.  Walking through the smoking detritus of the Citadel platform was Orson Krennic, his white cape flowing out behind him menacingly.  Of all the times for her blaster to go dead, it had to be now.  It didn’t matter, Jyn wasn’t going to cower like a little girl as she had all those years ago on Lah’mu.  She would face her nightmare, blaster or no, and she would not back down.

Krennic came toward her, his own blaster raised in front of him.  Jyn moved into plain view, completely abandoning her cover, and stood a step or two down the ramp, a challenge written in every line of her body.  She glared at the man in white, his gray eyes were the color of Lah’mu’s rainy skies as if to mock her pain and they were locked onto her with a combination of rage and bewilderment.

“Who _are_ you?” he asked.

Jyn didn’t understand.  How could he _not_ know who she was?  This man had haunted her life since she was a little girl, he had killed her mother and stolen her father.  His insistence on keeping her name on Imperial watch lists had probably contributed to Saw Gerrera’s decision to leave her behind as his band of fighters grew more desperate and volatile.  He was the night terror that still left her shaking in a cold sweat when she woke up.

How could he ask who she was?  Jyn decided she would make it so that he never forgot her name again.

“You know who I am,” she told him and raised her chin defiantly.  “I’m Jyn Erso.  Daughter of Galen and Lyra.”  It was a fact she had never been so proud of before.

“You,” Krennic spat.  “The child.” 

Jyn saw it all come together in his eyes then.  The realization was stunning to watch.  She had never before thought she could matter so much to anyone.  Yet even as she saw how his mistake of never tracking her down hit him, he was already putting her in the category of things to be dealt with swiftly.  She needed to play for time, if she could keep him talking, maybe she would find a way to take him out, even without a blaster.  Or better yet, maybe Kay-Tu and Cassian would get the ship running and off the ground.

“You’ve lost,” she told him with all the belief she could summon.

“Oh, I have, have I?” Krennic sneered, blaster still aimed directly at her heart.

“My father’s revenge.  He built a flaw in the Death Star.”  She smiled at him as she revealed her father’s unknown act of rebellion.  “He put a fuse in the middle of your machine and I’m about to tell the entire Rebel Alliance how to light it.”

There was a hint of panic in his eyes now, even as he tried to refute her claim.  “The shield is still up.  You’re not going anywhere, not even in my ship!  I have lost nothing.  You, on the other hand, will die with the Rebellion.”

He straightened his blaster arm, clearly ready to finally pull the trigger.  Jyn almost smirked.  Krennic was no soldier, everything about him telegraphed his shot.  She knew just when to duck and roll right off the side of the ramp, landing on one knee her finger already squeezing the trigger on her raised blaster – which she had forgotten was useless.  Nevertheless, two quick shots rang out from somewhere behind and above her, striking Krennic square in the chest.  She looked up and saw Cassian framed in the open doorway of the ship, blaster held steady with two hands, his gaze calm and calculating, and fully focused on the collapsed body of the man in white.  Jyn thought the sight of him standing there might be the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Jyn, let’s go,” he called down to her.

She got up to climb back onto the ramp, but she paused and looked back at her nightmare, wanting to make sure he was really gone.  She took one step toward the man in white—

“Leave it!” Cassian said sharply as he clamped a hand down on her shoulder.  “Leave it,” he said again, softer this time.

Jyn left Orson Krennic face down on the duracrete of the landing platform and followed Cassian onto the shuttle.

The ramp lifted and the ship sealed itself up tight.  “Kay!  Take us out!” Cassian shouted through the ship even as he hurried his way toward the front of the shuttle.

“Wait, what about the others?” Jyn asked, staying close in his wake.

Cassian hesitated just a moment before answering.  Jyn thought she knew what that meant, but she wasn’t going to let it be true, not yet.  “We’re not getting any response, from anyone,” he said quietly.

“Try them again,” she demanded.

Cassian looked as though he knew better, but he took out his comlink anyway.  He sat in the copilot’s chair and helped Kay-Tu disengage the landing gear.  “Bodhi!  Bodhi are you out there?” 

There was no response.  Maybe he had already escaped into space, but the sinking feeling in Jyn’s gut made her suspect otherwise.

He clicked a button on the comlink, and angled a shield on the shuttle.  “Melshi!  Sefla! Pao! Do you read me?”

A thin crackle of static.

As the ship rose on repulsors and the sublights flared to life, Jyn became frantic.  “They could be jamming us!  The Imperials, I mean.” She knew it was a desperate excuse, their comlinks had worked just fine before now.

“I get no active transponder signal readings from pad nine” Kay-Tu informed them. “Please, Kay-Tu, something may have just happened to the ship, Bodhi may be down there.  We have to check,” she pleaded with the droid, but spoke directly to Cassian and the blank face he wore.  Jyn had just found this team and she was relearning what it meant to trust, she didn’t want to let go of them so easily.  Cassian relented and gave a small nod to Kay-Tu who lifted off from the platform, a few troopers still firing at the ship, and skimmed low over the ground.

As they flew over the beach Jyn searched for Baze and Chirrut.  She had no idea where they might have ended up.  They could be anywhere, running, hiding, fighting – already lying fallen in the sand like so many others.  She tried to spot the vibrant red of Chirrut’s robes and the ungainly shape of Baze’s generator on his back, but the shuttle passed by too quickly for Jyn to be able to recognize faces among the dead and dying.  When they reached the perimeter of the base the very evident destruction on pad nine nearly made Jyn fall to her knees in the cockpit.  Even Cassian was muttering “no, no, no” under his breath as he stared at the scene.

The _zeta-_ class shuttle that Bodhi had rechristened _Rogue One_ was a mangled twist of metal, black smoke still pouring from the place that would have been the fuel tank.  All the landing gear had been retracted and the wings were half extended which meant Bodhi had tried to do as Cassian had ordered and fly away from Scarif.  He and whoever he had managed to get on board must have been shot down almost as soon as they had left the ground.  Their only consolation was the hope that Bodhi had at least gotten a message out so that his death hadn’t been for nothing.

“What about the rest of the beach?” Jyn heard herself saying, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the ship that had all too briefly served the Rebellion.  “There still might be people on the beach that we can…”  Her voice trailed off as the entire cockpit was suffused in a bright emerald green light.  She stared out the viewport at the blinding glow of the most powerful burst of energy she had ever seen.  She followed its trajectory up into the sky and there it was, a gray monolith among the perfect blue.

The Death Star had come to Scarif.

“Kay, get us out of here now! And hail the fleet!  Any ship that will answer.  We’re going to transmit those plans after all, the more people who have them the better the odds of someone getting them back to the Alliance alive,”  Cassian practically shouted as he turned in the copilot’s chair and began trying all the Rebel frequencies himself.

“But there might still be survivors on the beach,” Jyn said desperately.  “We might be able to get to a few of them!”

“We can’t, Jyn.  We can’t risk the plans.  If we don’t get the plans off Scarif it will all be for nothing.  I’m sorry.” His voice broke on the last word like he was apologizing to anyone who got left behind and not to Jyn at all.

But she knew he was right.

Cassian sat at the comm array adjusting dials and speaking into the microphone with increasing urgency.

“Can anyone hear me?  This is Captain Cassian Andor of the Rebel Alliance aboard an Imperial _Delta-_ class shuttle calling any ships of the Rebel Fleet.  Does anyone read me?”  He paused to await a response, when none came, he tried again.

They were nearing the edges of the planet’s atmosphere and Jyn was starting to get worried that Krennic had been right about the shield still being up.

“Kay-Tu, do you get any kind of reading on that shield?” she asked quietly while Cassian continued to call the fleet.

“I get no readings either way, but something tells me we don’t have to worry,” he said and pointed to a viewscreen on the console.  It showed a magnified external cam image of a behemoth Star Destroyer plummeting towards the planet, nose first, straight through the shield gate.  Jyn almost smiled, but then her ears caught a new voice in the cockpit.

“Captain Andor! We hear you.  This is Captain Antilles of the _Tantive IV_.”

“We have the plans!” Cassian announced without preamble as they passed through the rocky atmosphere and immediately took a hit from a stray laser blast.  Kay-Tu tried to take evasive action but they were caught in the middle of a dog-fight between the Empire’s TIE fighters and the Alliance’s X-wings and Y-wings.  Lights started flashing on the flight console and alarms beeped their warnings as proximity sensors went haywire and different areas of the ship started to take damage.

“We’re losing our shields quickly!” Kay-Tu said.

The ship rocked again and Jyn stumbled into a bulkhead.  “That can’t have been good,” she muttered amidst the clamor of the cockpit.  Yet another alert had added its voice to the fray, but Kay-Tu silenced it with a flip of a switch and reported the problem.

“The hyperdrive is gone,” he said calmly.

Jyn felt all the blood leave her face.  Without a hyperdrive they were stuck here, between the Imperial fleet and the Death Star, with no place to go.

“How did that happen?” she asked.  “I thought our shields were up!”

“A concentrated blast of cannon fire from any given ship —” the droid began.

“Yes, thank you, Kay-Tu.  I don’t actually want an explanation!”

“I understand.”

“—Andor?  Do you still read me? Captain Andor!” Came Antilles’ voice over the comm.

“Yes!” Cassian said and slammed a hand down on the console for emphasis.

“Did I copy you correctly?  You said you have the Death Star plans?”

“Yes! But we’ve lost our hyperdrive and we’re taking too much damage.  We’re going to have to transmit the plans to you, Captain, we can’t risk losing them.  It’s a large file so we’ll have to send it via tight-beam.  Are you able to hold your position to receive?”

“We’re docked with the _Profundity_ , but that new Star Destroyer in the system hit her pretty hard, I don’t know how much longer we’ll be here.”

Even as Cassian continued to speak, Kay-Tu locked onto the Mon Calamari flagship, then turned to Jyn with a strangely expectant set to his head and shoulders.  Jyn briefly wondered when he’d learned such human mannerisms.

She handed over the datacard that contained the Death Star schematics that so many had died for.

“If you’re prepared to receive and record we can begin transmission immediately.  We have your signal locked in.”

There was a momentary pause from the other end.  The shuttle bucked under another heavy impact.

“You may proceed with transmission,” Captain Antilles said.

“Transmitting,” Kay-Tu announced, punching a button.  Instantly a readout display lit up with a screen of bars that showed the progress of the transmission as the computer broke apart the large packet of data into a smaller stream of binary numbers to be reassembled by the computer aboard the receiving ship.

Jyn looked up to the forward viewport just in time to see a fiery and wildly spinning TIE fighter heading straight for them.  “Pull up!” She shouted and both Kay-Tu and Cassian responded immediately.  They managed to avoid a major impact, but one of the shuttle’s wings got clipped causing the deck to pitch violently under Jyn’s feet sending her head first into a low hanging bank of indicators.

“Ow!  Can’t we fire back?” she asked in frustration, massaging her head.

“Only if it becomes necessary,” Kay-Tu said.

“What?” asked Cassian, but most of his attention was on the slowly filling bars of the readout display.

“We’ve got to keep this ship together until transmission is complete, our shields are only at fifteen percent, and the portside stabilizer is gone which is going to make avoiding incoming fire much more difficult,” Jyn argued.  “None of that constitutes ‘necessary’ to you?”

“Right now, neither side is entirely certain of us.  The Rebellion can’t be sure it’s us in an Imperial ship, and the Empire will have noted that Krennic’s shuttle is sending a large amount of information to a Rebel ship, but they won’t know why or what it means.  Add to that the fact that we haven’t been acknowledging the Empire’s attempts to communicate with us and the only logical conclusion is that they are one suspicious move away from just blasting us into oblivion,” Kay-Tu explained.  “If we start firing the Empire will know for sure that this is a captured ship.”

“Fine,” Jyn grumbled.  Even if she could see the droid’s logic, she didn’t have to like it.

“Kay, what are you planning?” Cassian asked suspiciously, eyeing the droid with a narrowed gaze.  Jyn frowned at the spy, suddenly uneasy since he seemed to have picked up on something that she had missed entirely.

“Captain Andor?” interrupted the voice over the comm.

“Still here,” Cassian answered.

“We’ve got an incoming Imperial shuttle.  That wouldn’t happen to be you would it?”

“I’m afraid not.  We’re doing our best to evade fire from all remaining parties.” 

“That’s what I thought.  If there’s anything you can do to speed up that transmission, you should do it.  We’re about to be boarded.” His voice was firm and didn’t betray the terror he must have felt at the prospect of Imperial agents on his ship.  Captain Antilles of the _Tantive IV_ kept speaking, but the next part of his speech was harder to hear, as though he had stepped away from the comm and forgotten to click off.  “Coburn, take a group to the receiving bay and head off the boarding party.  Try to buy us as much time as you can.  Edwards, stand ready at the manual release for the docking clamps.  This is going to be a close one, so everyone be prepared to—” The rest of his orders were finally cut off.

Jyn looked at Cassian, “Is there anything we can do?”

It was Kay-Tu who answered.  “We can go to emergency life support and divert all power to boost the signal.”

Jyn stared into Cassian’s warm brown eyes and saw her own hope and desperation mirrored in their depths.  She knew instinctively they were of one mind on the matter.

“Do it,” she told the droid.  “The shields too.  Whatever’s left, give it all to the transmission signal.  Those plans have to get back to Yavin Four.”

Cassian gave her an affirming nod at her dangerous decision to make them a very fragile target, then he turned back to the console and began the protocols for shunting all the power remaining in the shuttles drives toward the comm array.

“I will deal with the transmission signal,” Kay-Tu said, stopping Cassian in the middle of what he was doing.  Both Jyn and Cassian faced the droid, Cassian frowning deeply.

“Kay, what?”  He didn’t even ask a full question, but his expression asked it for him.

“I suggest you and Jyn prepare the escape pod.  We will not survive much longer in this ship.”

“He’s right, Cassian.”  Jyn almost cringed as she said it, but this was no time to be petty about actually agreeing with the droid.

“You should also put on the uniforms of the crewmen we left in the passenger bay,” Kay-Tu said and flipped a line of switches.

“What?” said both Jyn and Cassian simultaneously though probably for different reasons.  For her part, Jyn didn’t remember ever seeing anyone else aboard the shuttle, although it stood to reason that there would have been a pilot and maybe a copilot or an officer of some sort who had stayed with the ship on Scarif.  She must have been more distracted and worried than she had thought when she first climbed aboard.

When neither Jyn nor Cassian moved, the droid suffused his vocabulator with urgency and spoke again.  “You should hurry.  If you can get into Imperial uniforms and make it to the escape pod, we might be able to convince whoever captures us that we fought off a small band of Rebels who had captured the ship before we decided we had to abandon the shuttle and make for the escape pod.  I’ll keep us alive for as long as I can or until you’re both ready.”

Jyn could see Cassian marshalling an argument of some kind, but she grabbed his arm and dragged him back through the ship.  He may not like it, but it was good plan under the circumstances and she’d be damned if she didn’t do anything and everything to get out of this alive.  Getting the Death Star plans was a good start, but she wanted to see the super weapon destroyed and she could only do that if she survived.

In the passenger bay, Jyn easily spotted the two dead crew members lying haphazardly throughout the compartment.  One of them wore a pilot’s uniform that was slightly more elaborate than the one Bodhi had worn, but still gray and bearing the Imperial insignia on the sleeve, the second wore a black captain’s tunic.  How she didn’t notice them earlier was somewhat of a mystery to her.  “You go prep the pod, I’ll get their clothes,” she said.

Fortunately, Cassian didn’t argue with her and when straight for a hatch that Jyn never would have guessed housed the escape pod.  His time undercover with various branches of the Imperial Service must have required him to be familiar with numerous different ships of the fleet and their operations.  That experience would probably save their lives.  It had gotten them this far, so there was no reason for Jyn to start doubting him now.

She undressed the young officer first.  Jyn tried not to shudder at the grind of bone on bone in the man’s torso where the bulk of the lethal damage had clearly been done.  Instead she focused on gauging the man’s height and build.  He looked just a few centimeters shorter than Cassian and maybe a smidge wider across the chest.  Hopefully the uniform fit well enough to fool whoever found them, although the Empire seemed to be sticklers for dress code, so who could say what would pass and what wouldn’t.  At least Cassian would be able to keep the boots he already had on.

To Jyn’s surprise the shuttle pilot was actually a female who was only a little bit taller than she was herself.  For once Jyn might actually have a decent chance of blending in rather than being swallowed in swathes of ungainly fabric.  She ditched her vest and after a moment’s hesitation decided to leave her own trousers on under the jumpsuit, just in case, but she would have to trade her boots for the pilot’s.  Her own shoes were decidedly against Imperial regulation and would stand out to any close inspection.  It was a wonder no one had noticed earlier during their infiltration of the Citadel.

“The pod is primed and ready,” Cassian said, coming back into the passenger compartment and startling Jyn.  She almost toppled from her careful one footed balancing act as she laced up her newly booted feet.  “Kay, how’re we doing?” he called even as he brushed by her to consult his droid.

“Transmission will be complete in three, two, one.  File transfer complete,” Kay-Tu announced with finality and immediately banked the ship away from a barrage of fire from three TIE’s flying after them in close formation.

“Look, there they go!” Jyn said pointing at the movement beyond the viewport as soon as she entered the cockpit behind Cassian.  “That’s them right? The _Tantive IV_?” She asked just as the oddly shaped cruiser blinked out of existence once it hit lightspeed.

“Yes, that was them.  They have the plans now.”

Jyn put a hand on his shoulder, wanting to reassure him, but not really knowing how.  “It’s a CR90 corvette, right?  Those blockade runners are good ships, Cassian.  They’ll make it.”  He looked at her and let out a breath he seemed to have been holding.  All of the sudden Cassian Andor looked so very _tired_ to her, as though his whole life had been leading up to stealing the Death Star plans and now that they were away and, for the most part, someone else’s responsibility, he didn’t know what to do with his remaining life.  If that was the case, then Jyn would double her efforts and make sure that he survived right alongside her.  “Go get changed, I have something to finish up in here.”  
Cassian grimaced.  “I never want to put on another Imperial uniform after this,” he grumbled, then stomped away toward the pile of clothing Jyn had left him in the passenger bay.

Jyn turned to the droid who was doing a much better job of keeping them mostly out of the line of fire than she ever could have.  “Do we have power back to regular systems now that the transmission is through?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ve diverted it all to the shields.”  Kay-Tu then held out something thin and glittering to her without removing his gaze from what remained of the battle.  “And you should probably hold onto this.”

It was the datacard.  Jyn hadn’t exactly forgotten about it in the face of their current predicament, but it had become of secondary importance now that the plans were flying out into the galaxy.  But what if something happened to the _Tantive IV_?  This datacard might be all that could save the Rebellion at this point.  She tucked it away in one of the cargo pockets on her pilot’s uniform.

“What about computers and surveillance?” she asked the droid.

“I have them shut down except for the necessary flight systems.”

“Can you get me some power on a data terminal?” she requested, holding up the two identichips she had taken off the fallen Imperials.  “I’ve got some work to do and maybe only a minute to do it.”

She wasn’t kidding.  Another laser blast hit them and the dim emergency lights in the cockpit flickered.  Jyn was grateful that the craft seemed to be more thoroughly armored than a krayt dragon otherwise they would have been blown into oblivion long ago.  Privileges of rank, she supposed.

“One of our sublight engines has been hit.  They are now at sixty percent efficiency.”

Just then the sound of a blaster firing from within the ship reached Jyn’s ears and she turned to Kay-Tu who looked back at her, somehow conveying alarm on his featureless face.  Jyn raced to the cockpit ladder and called down into the main cabin, “Cassian?”

“I’m fine!” he called back.  “Just keeping my story straight.”  
Jyn had no idea what that meant or why a blaster was involved, but she decided not to worry about it since she had other things to be doing.

“Quickly, Kay!  I need power!”

He toggled a switch and pushed a button, and the screen at the copilot’s station lit up.  Jyn shoved the first chip into the appropriate reader and got to work.  This would be a quick job, nothing detailed.  Just an extra piece of evidence to keep them from immediately being killed by the Empire.  She used footage from the onboard surveillance systems to change the holos on the chips, but didn’t do much else.  She noted that her new name was Kaia Solamar and she was on “special assignment” to serve as pilot to Director Krennic.  Jyn snorted a bit at the task designation.  Naturally, someone as pompous as Krennic had demanded special treatment when it came to how he got ferried about the galaxy.

She was about to eject the second chip that contained Cassian’s new identity when he walked silently up behind her, nearly making her jump, and asked, “Can you change the name from Dunstig Pterro to Anton Willix?”

Jyn turned to look at him.  She noted the scorched hole in his Imperial tunic right where his actual shoulder wound was and her eyebrows furrowed with several questions.  She only asked the one.  “Are you sure?”

He gave her a firm nod.  “Yes.  You were right before and I can work with a sudden promotion.  Especially given a ‘special assignment.’”  He too raised a sardonic eyebrow at the concept.  Apparently Krennic was a drama queen even by the standards of the Imperial Navy.  Honestly, the cape should have been a giveaway.

Jyn did as requested and changed the name on the identichip to Captain Anton Willix to match his new holo on record.  The console spit out the chip just as the rest of the computer systems went dead.

“What just happened?” Cassian asked in alarm.

“I suggest we get to the escape pod immediately,” Kay-Tu answered.

They dashed through the dark shuttle, staggering as the ship continued to absorb hits from enemy or possibly even friendly fire.  Jyn crawled into the small pod first and tried to occupy as little space as possible.  It would be cramped, but all three of them should fit.  Cassian scrambled in after her and moved to the side to allow Kay-Tu to fold his hulking frame into the remaining space.  The droid, however, hesitated in the open hatch.

“If you remember you cover story of escaping enemy capture, then there is a sixty one percent chance you will not be killed upon discovery.”  
“Kay?” Cassian’s voice came out unsure.  Jyn’s eyes narrowed as she wondered why the droid was wasting time reminding them of their cover instead of getting in the pod.

“The ship is dead, Cassian.  The pod will only make it out if I perform a manual launch from inside the shuttle,” Kay-Tu told them, looking Cassian dead in the eye.

“No!” Cassian shouted, his eyes widening in alarm.  “No, maybe we can hotwire it.  Just get in and we can try.”

“An Imperial officer would never bother to save a droid.  My presence would only decrease the odds of your survival.  This is the only way.”

“No, Kay, don’t you dare!”

“Jyn still has the copy of the plans.  They must get back to the Rebellion.  You can’t count on Captain Antilles getting away.  The Empire is going to track them down.  You must assume you’re the only ones with the Death Star plans.  You must survive.”

Jyn had no words.  She wasn’t exactly fond of the droid, but he was a valuable member of their team.  He had probably saved their lives ten times over just in the last hour, not to mention he had saved Cassian from a bone shattering fall in the data core.  She didn’t want to leave Kay-Tu behind the way they’d left Baze, Chirrut, Bodhi, Melshi, and all the rest to their own fates.  Yet she couldn’t help but agree with his assertion about the general callous attitude the Empire had toward droids.  And she had already come to a similar conclusion about the necessity of escaping alive with the datacard.

Cassian began a new argument, but another barrage of cannon fire tore through the ship.  Without even their depleted shields the ship started to break apart from the laser blast.  Jyn could hear the rush of air as it escaped into space, which meant the hull had been breached, probably in several places.

“We are out of time.  Goodbye, Cassian.”

“No, wait!  Kay!”

It was too late.  The pod’s hatch slammed closed and they were sliding away from the shuttle, Kay-Tu’s glowing photoreceptors still visible in the small viewport.  Then all at once, what was left of the ship was engulfed in flames.  The TIE fighter that had fired the killing blow screeched through the space above the explosion while Jyn and Cassian’s pod was pushed further out into the dark by the shockwave.

Cassian’s arm was still outstretched, his hand reaching for the friend he would never see again.  “Kay,” he said in a ragged voice.  It was not a sob or a plea, but an acknowledgment of a long friendship that endured years of hardship and service to the Rebellion and had ended in sacrifice to that very cause.  Cassian’s normally stoic and calm expression was broken and shocked.

Slowly, so as not to startle him, Jyn took his outstretched hand in her own and brought it down between them.

“I’m so sorry, Cassian,” she said and she meant it, but somehow the words sounded hollow.  He stayed silent, but he squeezed her hand tightly.  He finally turned his gaze away from where he had last seen Kay-Tu and Jyn felt his body go rigid beside her.  She leaned around him to see what had caused the reaction and felt her own eyes go wide in shock at the sight of the planet below them and the moon sized battle station that hovered above it on the far side.

Scarif had turned into a blazing sphere of light.  The shockwave from the Death Star strike had consumed over half the planet by now, the cerulean seas turned into deadly clouds of steam and vapor even as the water helped to absorb and dissipate the energy of the blast.  If there had been anyone still alive down there, they were gone now, Imperial and Rebel alike.  Whoever had ordered the destruction of the facility rather than risk Imperial secrets falling into the wrong hands hadn’t even taken into account the lives of all the Imperial personnel stationed on Scarif before firing.  Oddly, it made Jyn think about the lieutenant who had been guarding the secure lift in the Citadel Tower, the one who had never seen battle before.  At least the Rebels had all known what they risked by coming here, the Imperials had been betrayed by their own High Command.  It was a bitter comfort, seeing the evidence that the Empire was just as despicable as she had always been taught, but it was the only comfort to be had.

Cassian seemed to hardly be breathing.  His grip on her hand was so strong that Jyn was starting to lose feeling in her fingers.

“Cassian?” She asked tremulously, her voice barely above a whisper.

“My fault,” he eventually croaked out.  “All those fighters loyal to the Alliance.  I don’t even know how many came in the end.  But they all died because I convinced twenty people to participate in a desperate raid in enemy territory and it drew the rest of the Rebellion into the conflict.  I’m responsible for all those deaths.” His voice broke on the last words and Jyn knew he was sickened and horrified by the demise of his comrades.  She understood the sentiment, but he wasn’t thinking about the situation clearly at all, and she still needed him to be focused on staying alive.

Jyn put her free hand to his beard roughened cheek and turned his head until he was forced to meet her flinty gaze.  “No,” she said firmly.  “This is not your fault.  You were right. This mission had to happen and you know that.  Something had to be done or it would have been too late to challenge the Empire once the Death Star was revealed full force to the rest of the galaxy.  Every single person on that beach knew what they were fighting for.  Don’t take that decision and that sacrifice away from them.”

It took a few seconds for her words to sink in, but she saw the moment that something shifted in his eyes.  The faraway look of a man drowning in self-doubt left him and he focused on her, his dark brown eyes intense and incredibly close.

Then, all at once, he was kissing her, the hand not still grasping hers had come to rest at the nape of her neck, pulling her closer still.  Jyn froze in shock.  By the time she had figured out what was going on with enough clarity to respond he was starting pulling away.  He didn’t go far.  Cassian’s forehead rested against her own as he breathed slowly, eyes closed.

“I thought I told you not to do that again,” she said into the quiet space between them, referencing the one other time over a year ago that she had felt his warm lips against her own.

His mouth quirked up on one side in a half smile.  “I decided the reward outweighed the risk.”  His smile slipped then and he pulled away from her to look her in the eye, letting his hand fall away from her neck.  “Thank you.”

“For What?”  She asked and slowly removed her palm from his cheek, but she didn’t relinquish his hand.

“For continuing to remind me why I fight.  For understanding.”

Jyn didn’t feel like she understood very much of anything at the moment, but it clearly wasn’t the time to bring up such qualms.

“Cassian, I—"

Jyn cut herself off when the sound of an electronic chirp penetrated her awareness.  She blinked at Cassian and turned to find a light flashing next to what appeared to be a small comm array.  “We’re being hailed,” she stated.

Cassian reached out and depressed the button next to the flashing light, letting whoever was on the other end know that they had the attention of the pod’s occupants.

“Shuttle escape pod TH-X11-38 this is the _Devastator._ We have your position locked in.  You are being brought onboard for inspection. If you do not acknowledge, you will be terminated.”

Some of the color had gone out of Cassian’s face at the word _Devastator_ , but his voice was firm as he answered in his crisp Imperial accent.

“This is Captain Willix aboard escape pod TH-X11-38,” he began and a distinctive shudder passed through the pod.  Jyn put her arms out to brace herself.  “Tractor beam lock, acknowledged.”  He clicked off and looked at Jyn, not quite in panic, but definitely with worry.

“What is it?” Jyn asked, not wanting to be left in the dark about whatever could scare Captain Cassian Andor.

“We’re getting pulled onto the _Devastator_ , Jyn.”  The ship name didn’t mean anything to her so she raised her eyebrows and waited for him to continue.  “That’s Darth Vader’s personal Star Destroyer.”

Jyn felt her eyes go wide at that.  She turned to stare at the gray wedge shaped capital ship that was rapidly growing closer.  Those who served aboard the command ship of the Emperor’s right hand man were going to be the best of the best.  Their cover story would have to be airtight if they hoped to avoid a rather lengthy and painful interrogation. 

She met Cassian’s eyes and tried to put as much steel into her voice as she could manage.  “It’s not over yet.”  He lifted his chin in response and Jyn knew that together they could give the Empire a run for their money.

**Author's Note:**

> So, the working title for this was "Scarif 2.0." Not better, just different, as I believe it would have been.
> 
> In other news, there is clearly going to be one more installment in this series, and I mean it this time, only one more.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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